Droid Engineer Archive

Heh, Gron, I guess we just play two different games.

As I have said in several posts here, droids are used by a lot more players than you are giving credit to. To use your example, I know Master Rifleman who find combat droids useful - I am one myself. It's not for damage, but for leading/training strategies, or simply distracting so I can get away (used that on a Kimo not long ago). That same master rifleman probably has a storage droid or three as well, and maybe even a harvest droid.

Droids may not be out and out required like weapons or armor for many things, but we are firmly in step with the other 2nd tier crafting professions. Architects, shipwrights, tailors, and BE - we get as much business if not more as those professions. How often in a players lifetime do they buy a house (a lot less now with the new changes, too). Shipwrights suffer from the fact that they can't charge more than a few CPU for their ships and the fact that most looted parts are better than player-made ones. Tailors have decay, but the item is still wearable - but even when that bug is fixed, they aren't required at ALL. And BE? Let's not even go there.

The two "power" crafting professions are WS and AS. Chef has become more valuable since their revamp. What do all of these professions have in common? They all have a from of inherent decay.

I'm glad we agree we need decay, and we both are for adding features - but the latter, including the other things you have discussed like documentation, are not as essential to the core as decay is. In terms of market, DE could be VERY profitable just by implementing decay - and THEN make future additions - and your desire of droid ubiquity can begin to become reality.

AO

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Rihtan wrote:
But what is a "good" decay system?

At the moment I favor a decay system that leaves a player with a permanent chassis that can hold the droid's name, programming and coloring, when the droid has fully decayed. Then the player can take this artifact and stick it in his house as a trophy or bring it to a DE to be "fixed up" if he feels like it.

Droid's without chassis just be destroyed when they decay.

I also favor a construction system without the advanced/normal droid difference. All droids should require a chassis.

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Actually the Decay system that I suggested a while back did have such a "trophy," you had something to put in your house and talk about good old R259. This extra coding would be there simply to please people who don't want ot lose their "friend."

Part of the problem is that many people want to pretend that Droids in SWG are like the movies. Yet they are not, the only way to have them really be that would be if players could actually play droids as a race. Droids in the SWG game really don't have a personality at all. There is nothing stopping you from replacing your droid with exactly the same thing, and renaming it. Heck if you want, I am more then willing to roleplay you giving me your old droid and me refurbishing it. Any actual attachmentto a droid can be roleplayed around, it doesn't need to be replaced. If you are the type to actually be attached to a droid, then you shouldn't have an aversion to roleplaying refurbishing him.

As to what is a good decay system... I think one that gives the customers something back, such as no more batteries. It would also involve droids replaced "about" this often.

-Heavy use = 1 month.

-Moderate use = 2 months

-Casual use = 3 - 4 months

That would be fair IMO.

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YodaMac wrote:

My loath of having my droids disintigrate on me comes less from any interest in roleplaying, but perhaps more from both my personal "collecting" mentality (a big enjoyment in SWG for me iscollecting/crafting items and getting to use/keep them. Gives me a sense of permanence; making a lasting mark in the galaxy) and my basic NEEDS as a DE crafter and merchant. (How incredibly annoying it will be to constantly have to be replacing my own droids, whom I use regularly for crafting, storage, etc.)

I am not asking that droids last "forever" just because. I think it's perfectly acceptable to implement a more hardy "loss of vitality" combat decay system. Much more like weapons and armor, who slowly lose quality as they are repaired over and over. I think that makes perfect sense for combat droids as well. Combat players would be completely comfortable with that system as they are already used to it with their armor and weapons, so there wouldn't be much of an outcry at all. (just some minor whining)

Forall droids, a simple "speeder-like" maintenance system could be implemented. Requiring doctors, crafters, combatants, and everyone else to regularly pay to keep their droids healthy and functioning.(imagine the smoke pouring out of your poor R3 if you let his maintenace bar get too low...heh )

That way, those who use their droids "heavily" in combat or buffing, will need to repair and/or maintain their droids often. Who sells repair kits? DEs. Who COULD sell droid maintenance kits?... DEs.

My goal isn't to find a way to make DE's as lucrative as Armorers or Weaponsmiths. DE'swon't ever be as long as the focus of so many players is on killing things and each other. But this system does allow for droids to "decay" if not maintained, and does allow for combat droids to require replacement regularly as they "wear out". Makes sense. Fits in with current system of combat item decay. Doesn't mandatorily force players to replace their droids. Doesn't take away from the usefullness of droids in players eyes. (let's face it, they have only very recently come into their own...lets not take a giant step backward)

Our profession is far from broken (finally) and has lots more potentialfor future functionality. The short-term lust for a flowing river of credits should not steer the direction of our entire profession. But, for those who play for the bottom line: Adding more profession-centric functions always increases droid sales, and always will. Hopefully we DE's are putting as much effort into planning that next "upgrade" as we are trying to force decay on all involved.

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Yoda, the problem is this,

DE's already have many consumables that we sell, they are hardly real money makers. Sure you turn a profit on them, but not all that much. The LAST thing we need is another consumable to craft, in fact with the trend in custom kits and battery time, we seem to be drifting the other way. People DON'T like having to recahrge droids or constantly color them all the time. Even if they could repair the droids themselves, it would be an anoyance.

Believe it or not more people would rather buy a new droid once every couple of months, then to have to repair it twice a week, Just because it is less annoying.

You're also talking like you would be replacing your droids constantly. That's not what were talking about. A simple storage droid pulled for 2 minutes a day, may last 6 months. Your crafting droid may last 2-3 months. You are also talking like it will be a pain in the arse to craft an extra droid or 2 every few months for yourself. How many droids for others would you make in that time? Would a couple more for you really matter?

I don't agree that DE's someday can't be as lucrative as other crafting professions. Sure people like to kill things and each other, there is no reason that Droids can't fit into that niche as well. The money is out there, we just need our piece of the pie. Yes we SHOULD make as much money as other crafters as well. After all, we have to bid against them for resources and things for our combatents if we want them.

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TheRealTK421 wrote:

I think the reason I find decay to be as needed as it is would be that it's the one change that could touch every aspect of our business.

If we got some new feature X or Y...that's fine. But it won't ever decay and we'll see the sales-spike-then-plateau that we've always seen.

Decay makes that a thing of the past. Once in place, then we can start adding whatever..as long as the Devs care to listen and drop in new modules.

/shrug

I also realize that the dev. time we are likely going to be garnished may be less than some professions or aspects of the game. That's okay, in a way...we've had 3 'publishes' of content to our profession over time and some are still waiting for their first. We're just troublingly uniquie.


/bow

Respectfully,

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so true, DE's had a very misunderstood role as can be seen by the history of publishes and lack of info on droids in the manual. I realize that another pub with just content, no decay would be once again put us full circle...however i dont think it would be wise to just get decay and not some kind of new feature on a pub...for more reasons then the bad reactions or possible fast loss in sales. It is the fact we need more positive press, with more new features there will be a re-surgance with ppl reading up on droids. Generally when something is mentioned in the published ppl read over it, so if some new droid function is added it wil be good advertising for us that will bring more ppl around to researching droids overall, or at least asking us DE's in game "hey what else do droids do?"

There is some food for thought.