Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droid Module Focus (Merchant Barker): Information, discussion and bug-reporting (04/23/04)
Javac wrote:
From the TC update notes:
- Changed the skill requirement for the merchant barker to Advertising IV
- Increased the time between merchant barks to 60s.
Time increase good, but why the skill requirement increase?
I just updated the original post to reflect these changes.
/bow
Respectfully,
Javac wrote:
From the TC update notes:
- Changed the skill requirement for the merchant barker to Advertising IV
- Increased the time between merchant barks to 60s.
Time increase good, but why the skill requirement increase?
I believe the skill requirement increase is to lessen the starport spam that people keep complaining about.
This is interesting and hopefully useful. I still think they should implement it somewhat differently, but oh well. I'd prefer if the droid simply didn't bark at all, but instead had an option in the "merchant"item in the radial menuthat let the merchant give the droid a 64-128 character sub-title for it's name that would float over the droid at all times, but onlyforplayersthat arenearby. This would draw a player's attention to the droid without spamming. Then the long message that is recorded should be 255 - 512 characters in length and should only show up when a player examines of converses with the droid.
Modeling the droids functionality to mimic almost exactly the behavior of spammers seems to me to be unwise and very limiting. But we will see.
The Role-Play Value.
The ability to leave a droid in a different place than you the character is located, speak and give a waypoint is extremely useful in creating events and role-playing missions. For example. Lets say a person wanted to set up a race across a planet. Let us say the Race Starts in Bela Vista on Corellia. The Droid is standing in an empty area of Coronet, speaking very questionable phrases every 60 seconds. In order for the racers to know the second way point, they must converse with this droid. The way point would then lead them to Doaba Guerfel.
In the hands of a creative mind, this module can do wonders. It will also create another need for higher level merchants to be around. The possibilities for hosting Role-playing events are endless with the use of this droid. If someone understands what I am trying to explain here, maybe they would be so kind as to bring this over to the Event disucssion forum. I am not the most eloquent writer and I am sure someone would be able to explain the possibilities of this new module better than I can.
better yet.....
the merchant droids SHOULD have gotten the holograms the dancers got and project a little ad...it could be as simple as a picture of a gun if you where selling guns
maybe as you moved up the skill tree you could get animations or more elaborate holograms....
little holo billboards
this is much more clever and less intrusive than spam....
QUESTION:
What does Auto-Repair Power and Quality have to do with Merchant Barking? Is that some feature of merchant barking, or a typo in the post or the schematic?
Thanks,
-neshura
neshura wrote:
**** Effectiveness (Auto-Repair Power and Quality): 50/50% Conductivity and OQ ****
QUESTION:
What does Auto-Repair Power and Quality have to do with Merchant Barking? Is that some feature of merchant barking, or a typo in the post or the schematic?
Thanks,
-neshura
It's a typo in the post(from late night copying/pasting). I'll update/fix this in a bit.
/bow
Respectfully,
I know it's late in the process for this, but people continually ask me the same questions...and it'd be nice to put that information on the droid since we don't seem to have city Bulletin Boards in game.
kalmank wrote:
If a Merchant programs the droid and gives it to a non-merchant, will it still bark or just give the wp?
No - if the owner does not have the skill, it will just give them the option to retrieve the waypoint like everyone else.
Also does experimentation affect the merchant barker module?
Nope
Thanks,
Isildur
TlEDestroyer wrote:
I think that many people are missing an entirely different use for this Droid.
The Role-Play Value.
The ability to leave a droid in a different place than you the character is located, speak and give a waypoint is extremely useful in creating events and role-playing missions. For example. Lets say a person wanted to set up a race across a planet. Let us say the Race Starts in Bela Vista on Corellia. The Droid is standing in an empty area of Coronet, speaking very questionable phrases every 60 seconds. In order for the racers to know the second way point, they must converse with this droid. The way point would then lead them to Doaba Guerfel.
In the hands of a creative mind, this module can do wonders. It will also create another need for higher level merchants to be around. The possibilities for hosting Role-playing events are endless with the use of this droid. If someone understands what I am trying to explain here, maybe they would be so kind as to bring this over to the Event disucssion forum. I am not the most eloquent writer and I am sure someone would be able to explain the possibilities of this new module better than I can.
Beautifully spotted Tie ![]()
A few friends and I are already setting up some rather sexy player run quests based around this and a couple of players ‘dressing up’… I’m anticipating a few forum threads on how to complete the ‘DE doppelganger’ mission on Naboo tehehe ![]()
Kisses
Cass