Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Droids: Where we were and where we’re going.
A bigNO to the notes I just saw about publish 8 and the droid ability to 'bark' information aboutthe location of playervendors.There's enough spam already injust about every major city without actively encouraging players to make even more of it with droids.
How about something like a terminal in each city where you can pay a small amount of money to be listed with a small description of your shop or something. Kinda like a galctic yellow pages.
But please no barking spam!!
Barking spam does suck. It just slows down the game (spam=LAG) and clutters the screen so other conversations are obscured.
I believe that advertising is necessary - it is hard to find people with services you need right now. The above suggestion for a galactic "yellow pages" is brillant! No spam and specialists easy to find. A big plus is that it would also generate more business for said specialists who were listed!
No to spam!
Yes to useful advertising!
Thunderheart wrote:
Merchant Barker module: This would give droids the ability to bark advertisements, give waypoints to shops, have additional information available so players could list prices, services, etc through a radial menu command.
Gods no..
If you give the robots the ability to SPAM us further, then PLEASE let us ignore the [censored] things... we don't need MORE spam.... or better yet, LET them spam us, but if they spam more than once every 2-3 minutes make it so that we can attack and destroy them... take a few down and their masters will learn to be polite..
How exactly are these combat modules going to make my droids usefull? Those who can afford to buy a quality droid are the same folks who have elite combat professions and DON'T NEED A DROID. Those who could really use them, i.e. newBs and those working through the marksman or brawler tree, can't afford them. I know for a fact that most people don't understand the costs, both tangible and intangible of making these droids; however, it is becoming evident that the Devs do not fathom this as well.
TH, do me a favor, please. Go to http://www.undeadfish.com/droids.phpand look at the prices. Some of those are even underpriced, especially if you take into account the quality andrarityof the resources used and any experimentation (not that experimenting matters for droids).
How about just changing the name from Droid Invasion, There is no invasion, its just a nerf to probots. But entertainers will get new droids with disco lights WOOOOHOOOO.
Lame Seriously lame
Come on guys is this really the best you have to offer?
Thunder what in the heck is going on behind the scenes?
You have to be a tad more creative, how about you guys take a feild trip to a Kinder Garden and get some decent ideas?
Is it your goal to drive people from the game or actually listen to the people that payed you to play this game?
Do you think you can survive the next game coming out with grandious ideas like flashing lights on an r2?
Well best of luck on your new career, since it really seems this one wont be lasting to long with the directions your taking this game.
Here's someideas for publish 8/9/10/etc (if you gotta trickle out new chassis like new mounts, 1 or 2 every few publishes, that's fine, just tell us they're coming, k?)
Alot of these ideas are NERFS in part. But mainly to DE. (in fact only one that isn't a DE only nerf involves helping smugglers get a revamp of Underworld they been wanting). But if we want devs to increase droid's abilities and such, we're gonna have to give someplace. So, how about making certain chassis better at some things, and useless at others?
Look at the Jawa Sadcrawler scene, get stills, etc. I'm sure Lucasarts could provide you with large, high-quality photos of the models and props from this scene. Also the scene of the Jawas selling them. Some of these are already in game-
The Bug-Eyed droid (Deathstar Droid, the action figure was called way back)
The creepy harlequin-looking droid, with the pointy nose and big, creepy grin. Come on..got to admit that thing as a combat droid wouldn't give you flashbacks everytime you went to a circus? hehe. It's just too creepy NOT to have.
The big round black dome. The one the Jawa is shooing past the screen. This would be perfect as an entertainer droid, lol. A mobile smoke machine/lightshow.
I know the idea of announcing a WP to a vendor or shop sounds like a good one on the surface, but the Coronet and Theed starport "plazas" are already virtually non-stop walls of AFK Spamming players, to the point that many people avoid using those cities completely where possible, or enter the starport in Theed from the ship-port side to avoid the lag near the entrance.
With the advent of a droid "spambot", no cantina or city venue near any commonly used facility will ever be fit for "live player" use again. The AFK spammers will set a doid to spamming one location, then simply move to another and start their macro, doubling the amount of advertising traffic.
Consider an "Advertising space" or "Billboard", where a merchant can place a "Poster", crafted by an artisan perhaps, that allows them to leave a printed message, rather than the spambot. Enable the droid barkers for private shops or malls; allow merchants to exchange placement of them in each other's shops, any of a myriad of places where they will be an interesting and welcome adjunct to the merchant's sales and ambiance, but PLEASE do not enable them in the non-player fixed cities like Theed and Coronet, or you will have a repeat of the lag debacle in Coronet on Test Center when vehicles were available to try.
In short, it's a clever concept with incredible potential for abuse.
LLan Farseeker - Chilastra