Droid Engineer Archive

Share your worst customer complaints/emails about droids! Let Devs & Q know how much damage is being done!

Tonight I logged in and for the first time in a long time I was actually looking forward to it. I had just restocked after getting Expert Blueprints and had Probots and Advanced R4s in my vendor. The night I finished restocking I sent out an email to previous customers letting them know they could now buy Probots and more advanced droids from me.

My heart fell when I read one of the most disheartening emails from a customer which shocked me back into realizing how broken droid implementation in SWG and our profession truly is.

Before u read the email (I'm including the text below) I ask all my fellow DEs to please add their own customer complaints/emails - the worst of the worst - let's show Q and the devs that it's not just us whinning here - that there is a whole game community out there that is fed up... some to the point of never wanting to buy or own a droid again... even if all does get miraculously fixed... the damage to the prof will be done.

Here's that email:

"I have never gotten any reliable or even romotely decent use out of the two droids I purchased from you, so I doubt I would even consider purchasing any more"

See Q/Devs - u guys might think it's just us DE's sitting online here with nothing better to do but whine but u need to understand the damage u are doing to our prof, to the game, to our customers by not immediately prioritizing our issues. If u don't stop the bleeding soon we'll all be CH bio-engineers or Bounty Hunters in a couple of months and u won't have anybody willing to ever play a DE again.

I am not high enough into the profession to have regular customers...

But I had a customer tonight send me a tell asking "Can R5 droids be crafted, or only R2's?" and I told him that R5's, R4's, R2's, and R3's could be made in that order, and that I can currently make R5's. So he asked me to buy one, and I said sure, and asked him what he wanted in it. Me being 1 / 0 / 0 / 1 I can only make level 2 mods, so I told him that. He said he wasn't sure, he just really wanted the droid for looks, and asked how much. I told him 1k (I don't know prices right now, so I'd rather underprice just to cover costs of resources, than to overprice and lose a customer). He asked me what I could put on it for 5k, and I told him the mods available. He wanted a data mod, after I told him they are worthless pretty much. He still wanted it, and still gave me 5k for the droid.

Needless to say, we are a broken class, but we're not worthless. I get almost a tell a day requesting a droid. Except for this one incident, they are always too high for me, so I can't make the droid.Also, the devs are giving us a little more recognition now. I have faith that in a month or so, the class will be running as it should be.

you said it yourself , the customer wanted the droids for looks. Last I checked droids werent supposed to be novelty items. The class is broken and useless. no question about it

The thought about getting something in the future , sure I am glad that something might be happening. Why is it that we have had to wait so long? And certainly there hasnt been any responce from the developers, looks to me they tried everything to stall for time.

I am glad some people are getting to testservers to help find issues. But then we certainly all know what the issues are already, plus most of us have already suggested a million things. I hate to be so critical but thats what I would do to stall for more time. Out of all the professions the de is probably the most broken one. I am doing 3 other professions and sure there are some major issues with the others, but de has to be hands down the most usless one in the game. Mobile crafting stations is all we can make. not something to jump over the moon about.

lol, this reminds me of conversations I have. I just got 0/0/0/1 but haven't had the chance to break into the seeker market. When I was a brand new DE my conversations went like this:

Customer: Hi, can you make me a combat droid?
Me: I'm a new DE, I can make you a mouse droid with a med, data, or inventory module.
Customer: So it can heal me with the med mod?
Me: No, you can heal your own wounds outside of hospital
Customer: Well, I'm not a medic...how about inventory, that sounds cool.
Me: Well...it can hold..um, 1 item.
Customer: Hmm...okay how about data...I'd like to be able to move my waypoints around...
Me: Well, you can't do that...it can store more droids and pets!
Customer: Well, er, nevermind
Me: I'll let you know when I can make more.
Customer: Sure...



My conversations now are pretty similair except I get to explain that the DZ70 ATTACK droid has 45 hp and warn them not to sneeze on it.

Well I know permadeath is going to be fixed...But boy, did I have a fun time last night...

A customer just bought a medical/crafting droid from me for 13k...An hour or so later, I get this tell from another guy that I've talk to before....He tells me he was in a duel and killed the other guy's droid...I shamed him and said why did you have to do that?...He explains to me he didn't know about droid permadeath...I said well its been around and it was in the patch notes...Then he asks me if I have some warranty....What?!...This is where I started to lose it...

I explained that no, there is no warranty....So he wanted that same droid for 5k...'Give me a break here, I know it doesn't cost that much in resources and you're wealthy'...That is what ticked me off right there!...I said did I tell you to duel? Did I tell you to kill his droid? NO....It wasn't my fault that you did it and there is no reason why I should lower my price for you...

Then he went on about how my customer service was bad...Please...Hes some idiotic teenager who wants me to pay for his stupidity...

So then my boyfriend sees him in town buying a medical R2 from some DE for 2500c.....(and the best part is is that she critical failed twice to make that one)....HA!.....

Yeah I do a heck of a lot more explaining than I do selling, except for that whole thing about selling. Heck right now I make more off of selling droid batteries than I do selling droids.

I feel truely sorry for anyone that pays an exorbitant amount for most any droid. I've had a few runins with other droid engineers about my prices. I admit, I make fun of them for ripping people off. There's no excuse, especially with permadeath to charge that much for a probot. I charge anywhere from 8000 to 9000 credits for an advanced model with Armor 3. After I get to armor 5, or armor 6 if I can find the resources I still won't charge that much more.

I saw someone charging 18k for a standard probot!! Yesh. It goes on and on like that. Supply and demand is one thing, but that is just simply price gouging, or trying to keep people from bugging you by raising prices. My question to these people is, why be a droid engineer if you don't want to build droids?

Feel free to flame me if you feel the need. I can take it.

If you compare the time you use explaining to the time you actually sell something... Sheesh, I say.
*rolls eyes*


And when you are to explain what the modules are good for.

Medical - "You can heal wounds even if you're outside the hospital or camp. Oh, you're not a medic? Then it's useless to you"

Item Storage - "You can store extra items... well, at least a few. Honestly, you can't store much at all, it's useless ye see"

Data - "That module is used as an extra data-pad. To store additional data. Errm, wait. You can't store waypoints though nor can you store missions. Hmm, you can store pets and droid in it so you can have unlimited amount of pets with you at all times... wait, they said that they're gonno change that so NO pets are allowed in the data modules....... guess that leaves Schematics then. What you say? No need for you to have a droid that store 80 schematics?! Oh pfft!!"

Add to that:


Customer: "What does the R2 do?"
Me: "Errm, it depends on what modules you put in it,"
Customer: "What does the Surgical Droid do?"
Me: "Errm, it depends on what modules you put in it,"
Customer: "What does the Treadwell do?"
Me: "Errm, it depends on what modules you put in it,"
Customer: "What does the R3 do? Is it better then R2?"
Me: "Errm, no... it depends on what modules you put in it,"
Customer: "What does the Repair Droid do? Does it repair things?"
Me: "Errm, no... it depends on what modules you put in it,"



* S C R E A M *

Change that to "None of them do anything on their own, it depends what modules you put in it" and then you only have to repeat yourself to them twice instead of five times.

Yes, I have had to repeat that several times to the same person...

As a customer myself, I am totally disgusted that I paid 80K for an advanced Probot (w/repair and med abilites) that is permadeath, does CDEF gun-type damage, and has non-existant armor.

My Probot does an average of 30 damage on white/blue con mobs, and can also be easily killed by a blue con mob. For these reasons, I don't use it anymore. What a joke and waste of money!

i dont let it go past 1 question, i ask "do you know about droids?"

if i get a negative response i hit them with 4 different emails explaining how droids work, modules, naming and so on, if they ask a question then i say "check email 3" ect i dont have personal time to uptrain every person that tells me "just a quick question..."

eck!

Thats why I sell my probots at 9k, let people know about permadeath and move on. That sucks someone payed 80k, that is also why I only put armor and a repair kit in my advanced probots.

It was funny because people were asking me, "Well 9ks a bit much for a bot that perma dies, I will hit you up when they fix permadeath."

My reply, "great, but if they fix permadeath I will probably tripple my prices."

As far as the other driods go I only custom build, however I think I will start selling seekers bulk.