Droid Engineer Archive

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Gron_DM wrote:

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Straker_Atrella wrote:

Gron,

Did you read my earlier thread where I demonstrated exactly how much money I would have lost from one customer if this was implemented?

Not in theory, from hard numbers of what one customer bought from me.

It would be bad finiancially.

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apples and oranges, easier and more fun to use droids = more sales

your saying that more sales will only break even? its a matter of design

at this point its all theoretical even your example, if the design is well made it could easly net us more creds-imho

i respect all the people that have had this discussion with me but its obvious we arent going to agree on this.

i hope to see new mods added, and then then we can sit down and look this idea over with some merit

in the mean time this decay writeup looks nice drashk seems very confident well get the green light on it.

if in addition to CU we can get something to make us part of the swg combat scene ill be estatic if not decay would be great.

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See, that's the problem - no one can make an argument for modularity that doesn't hinge on us getting something else - decay, new droids, etc.

I really understand what you are trying to say, Gron. You are saying that if the system for building droids changed suddenly all kinds of new people would want droids. You are also saying that if we get new, exciting droids than our sales would go up. These two things are mutually exclusive at this point - new droid types/modules would increase our sales without modularity.

On it's own, modularity does nothing but add role-play value and serve to make droid purchases less important. You cannot say that this will increase sales, because evidence to the contrary abounds. No one is suddenly going to develop a need for a medical droid if modularity were put in, just like suddenly 100's of new customers didn't start to want paint kits when they went up to 2000 uses. Sure, we got a few more sales just because of awareness (the kits were advertised on the load screen), but overall the people who didn't care about color still don't care about color; those that need droids now may like modularity to be added, but it wouldn't bring us new people who suddenly developed a need for a droid. Some have speculated that if this was done in addition to new modules it would be financially feasable for us, but again - we'd get the same benefit, even more, from just the new modules alone.

After having this discussion, I think we never examined degrees of modularity. I could support a modularity system if it included one of two caveats :

1) Only the DE who built the droid can change the modules,

*OR*

2) Only empty slots could be filled, i.e. those left empty during crafting can be filled but others cannot be replaced, once an R3 has had six modules installed in any manner it cannot be modified further. This leaves room for "future" growth, but doesn't negate the decision-making process in initial droid sales.

If one of these two things happened, then yes - you've got my vote. It would be "fun" and help RP. However, with these limitations you will see the appeal of the idea diminish even more; the only possible benefit that couldn't be achieved with those two limitations would be capitalistic in nature, which are the very reasons given before that this financially would be a bad thing if suddenly everyone was able to swap modules on a whim. Every droid part would become a bazaar commodity, and even if it required a DE to switch out modules, you'd see tons of novice DE's springing up happy to do so. Content never to make a droid but just put 'em together.

Finally, it's all about power. The power to create something and make it sustain in the game world. The power to run our market and configure our droids competitively - if someone is daft enough to stock stimpack/trapping combo DZ-70 droids and I stock more popular combinations, shouldn't I get the sale? Shouldn't crafting a droid mean something, not just an empty shell that can be reconfigured at will? Isn't that what we've been fighting for since the begining of the Galaxies?

AO

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Gron_DM wrote:

i agree with most of your points AO, sales wouldnt be noticably increased with just modularity nor would #of users. at best id expect to see maybe a 30% boost to sales but nothing compared to if we get another serious patch making us needed by the masses. if we do get a powerup set (new consumable mods) i think id be wise to make those parts modular, i outlined this in the partial mod post i did. but like you said that is an instance of modularity in tow with another module set/new functions. at the end of the day it alone doesnt make enough headway to get support to eat that much dev time. i have no clue when to expect any form of new mods, the last dev communication on this was months ago...i did pm drashk about this and his gut instinct to us getting anything new on CU was no. which means were hosed.....not to be negative but if they dont go about changing the combat systems in swg often if we dont get put in the equation we wont see anything new for combat as it would be adding free checkers....and we have all seen how that argument runs.

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I don't think we will see anything *new* with the combat upgrade, but neither will anyone else really. It's all about balance of what we already have, and I'm sure our Droids will be rebalanced for "good" or "bad". See, we really don't know - maybe they balanced droids when they implemented the new combat "under the hood" stuff and we won't see a signifigant change in stats; then again, maybe they took our advice and kicked them up a notch to compete until the combat balance and they will get "nerfed". When I think of this, all I can think of are those poor CH's who got nerfed - what a year ago? - under the supposed rules for the "new" balance, when it's still yet to arrive. The point is, for all we know, our combat droids just may become more popular than they are now.

I do disagree about future implementations - I'm actually more optimistic than you are. I think the reason didn't see more combat related implementations in the Droid Publishes because they knew the combat upgrade was coming. Why add something they will just have to balance later? Although none of us program SWG and can't say, I'd be willing to speculate that it will in fact be easier to give us droids with combat assistance abilities once combat is on an even plane. We had a thread asking about this when the publishes happened - droids that give players combat bonuses or other non-firepower assistance (passive abilities) - and I think these things will be much more possible post-balance. Say, squad leader droids that allow them to recover more quickly from special commands, or a droid that helps rangers track better.

I guess I just see us as in a better place now than you do. I don't think DE is all that bad these days. We have enough modules now that most players have a need for some form of droid, and I think our droid economy would actually be pretty darn good if we got some decent decay. Think of all the droids we've managed to sell so far - I used a mail parser the other day to sort all my saved in-game mail, and I've sold somewhere around 4500 droids since the droid publishes ten months ago. That's one crap-ton of individual droid sales - it proves that, at least on my server, people want droids and have a use for them, even now. The problem is that we see very few repeat sales (combat droids do decay, very very slowly, and the occasional med droid gets fried in battle). If even 1/3 of those people who bought droids from me found them useful enough to replace when decayed (say, every couple of months), I wouldn't be waiting for the "new modules" cycle to begin again to get some sales.

That's how we've operated so far. We get something new (better combat droids, new utility modules, JTL "goodness") and we ride out the sales until something newer comes. Unfortunately, we can't sustain that for long. The Devs aren't going to be giving us major additions every couple of months. With the notable exception of Jedi, we have seen more post-launch attention than ANY other profession. This is the proverbial "give a man some fish, he eats for a day; teach him how to fish for himself...", because we are relying on the Devs to replenish our modules every so often to give more people uses for droids, when in fact if we had our own way of creating repeat sales (decay) the system would need replenishment organically.

I really think the outlook on droids is quite good. We are never going to be WS/AS, but I don't think many of us set out to be. We need a simple form of decay, and new modules are always going to be nice, but I just don't see modularity as part of this equation unless it was a DE-only minigame with severe limitations as I briefly outlined above - something to be considered way down the road when we really reach maturity as a profession. We're healthy young-adults now, but we are still a ways from true adulthood.

AO

Message Edited by AudioOrgana on 12-03-2004 08:25 PM

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AudioOrgana wrote:

I really think the outlook on droids is quite good. We are never going to be WS/AS, but I don't think many of us set out to be. We need a simple form of decay, and new modules are always going to be nice, but I just don't see modularity as part of this equation unless it was a DE-only minigame with severe limitations as I briefly outlined above - something to be considered way down the road when we really reach maturity as a profession. We're healthy young-adults now, but we are still a ways from true adulthood.
08:25 PM

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Here I am thinking we're polar opposites and then I see this part of your post. After reading this I wonder if the largest part of our disagreement was based on when you thought I wanted the modularity system?

I dont think we're going to get a whole lot of attention for a while so in the short term I'm just hoping the devs get to fixing a few things on our list of bugs.
In the long term(9-15 months) I'm hoping for a publish that will include a complete rework of the system that might include decay, more modules, the modularity system and a few other bells and whistles. Given how far that is away, the details are fluid.

Of course I guess I do disagree with part of your post. I doubt we're quite up to young-adults yet. More teenagers I think. On the bright side we're no longer on the bottom of the SWG totem pole anymore. These days the smugglers have that unconfortable position. They are the ones needing the lovin' these days.