Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Barker Droids on TC
DocSavag wrote:Well I dont' know. If you log out I know he will log out as well eventually but I don't know how long that takes. It is possible that he will store when you travel off planet. I was away from him for more than a couple minutes in my test. Does anyone have any experience with droids like this? I can remnember leaving my droid in my house and goind and doing missions (grouping with them gave me better xp)
Currently, if you set a droid on patrol somewhere, he'll stay patroling as long as you don't call another droid or the server reboot. Period.
You can log off for hours then come back, he'll still be there patroling, unless the server rebooted during that time.
Didn't tried with a just standing there droid, but for patroling I'm sure.
I often leave a driod patrolling on one of our farms just for looks. I have travelled on-planet for hours and they alwayskeep trucking along until stopped / stored / slain / logged.
My current plans are to use the droids as signs only, typically in Theed,while restocking in a PC. Any barking beyond "Hello" or "Good morning" would aggrivate myself into shooting my own droid. I can't argue that spamming works for some, but it's not for me.
Haruspex77 wrote "BTW, since there is only the name (other than spam) to attract people to the droid, the inability to name many droid types makes them unacceptable as barker modules. Oddly, these are exactly the ones, like protocol droids, that would seem to be the best choices."
Amen to that brother. A protocol would be my #1 choice, with abrightly coloredbig BLL #2 (no bark = sign only, BLL = billboard for a sign). Perhaps after the upcomming Droid Pub wewill be given the ability to name them. Seems odd C3PO was custom built by a kid but is now universally available as the only model. We'll have to wait for Episode 3; maybe one of thethings Anikin does trying to make master Jedi is hologrind DE making C3POs. That might explain it...
DocSavag wrote:
Well that goes a long way to prevent them from being a huge problem if only Merchants who currently have Ad IV.
60 seconds is about right I think.
Well, they are looking better.
The problem with a 60second bark with no additional information is that a willing buyer would have to wait around for quite a while (with no promise of joy) to get any details beyond the droid name about what was sold or happening at that waypoint.
Another problem with a 60 sec bark is that it will not catch many of the travelers through a spaceport or shuttle area. A really short bark at 30 seconds has advantages in that regard for gaining attention. Instead, we will be reduced to "visual spam" by placing BLLs where the name is likely to be seen. If they can't make it adjustable perhaps they could make the bark frequency a function of the bark size. Like len(bark)-90=sec.
The requestable "additional information" is really very important to keeping spam down. A decent sized area (at least the size of a description on a bazaar item) is needed to describe what is at the waypoint. Perhaps it could be a feature of the waypoint instead of the droid, that would be nice for mail and other purposes as well.
BTW, I didn't mean to imply that my concerns about implementing additional information without a live link to the vendors discouraged the devs from implementing it. I really doubt they even read it. But it still irritates me seriously when an AFK barker sends people to an empty vendor. I am suprised at how often that happens to me.
Reduce the spam....give the bark repeat times to be between 120 seconds and 300 seconds or something...it's bad enough around popular places with all the afk people spamming every 10 secs =/ My ignore list is getting long, and knowing Sony, they won't let you ignore Droids.
I couldn't find any way to ignore the droids when I was testing them on TC.
I am in the minority I guess though because the spam in Coronet and Theed don't bother me. Occasionally I'll grab a waypoint of of one of them and check it out. Most of the time I just ignore it (not /addignore..just let it pass by me) The only people I've ever gone to the trouble to actually add to my ignore list are fools who spam their message over and over with no pause at all as they run through the city. Usually begging for something. Merchants barking their wares seems somehow immersive to me so I just let it flow around me.
That .. and I try not to hang out in Coronet and Theed 
DocSavag wrote:
I couldn't find any way to ignore the droids when I was testing them on TC.
I am in the minority I guess though because the spam in Coronet and Theed don't bother me. Occasionally I'll grab a waypoint of of one of them and check it out. Most of the time I just ignore it (not /addignore..just let it pass by me) The only people I've ever gone to the trouble to actually add to my ignore list are fools who spam their message over and over with no pause at all as they run through the city. Usually begging for something. Merchants barking their wares seems somehow immersive to me so I just let it flow around me.
That .. and I try not to hang out in Coronet and Theed
I really only find the spam irritating if I am trying to train, sell or do something elsewhere I need to see other's questions or responses directed at me. Lots of folks don't use tell, even in a noisy environment -- I am often guilty myself of being too lazy or forgetfulto add /tt in front of the line. With spatial on, and normal sized window, you can lose a response in a blink if the spam is flowing.
It is a good place to check if you want something in particular, that odd or expensive item is often being advertised there. Sometimes it is hard to keep up with the flow though, one trick I use is the "set color by content" in the option window or whatever it is called there. That will color the messages I am interested in.
If I am just running through, I am out of range in 10-20 seconds so not much accumulates.
BTW, Doc, how often do you find those waypoints good, as advertised? Some days on Bria I have gotten as bad as 50% mis-advertised vendors (empty or nothing as advertised). And that doesn't count the vague ads that only sounded like he would have what I wanted. That is the big reason I wanted a direct vendor link.
Doc,
I tend to agree - I can usually just filter through the chaff (as I have separate windows for tells and guildchat so they don't get spammed), but it's pretty bad with all these idiots in game who don't know what a pause command is...they think they need to /pause 3 between shouts, yells, says, and emotes all while standing near the starport or cantina. The devs should make the bark time random between a large timer (perhaps reduce the randomness as you go up the advertising tree or something)...but once people can put up a droid, and then go off hunting, etc, it WILL increase all the spam - and the test center is NOT a good place to get realistic knowledge that that won't be the case (IMO) - both the number of droids roaming between the starport and the cantina will increase, but if they don't find a way to force people to spread it out, then the spam will be so horrendous that you can't even talk to someone in your own group.
At the least, perhaps put the droid spam in an auction channel that you can filter out into it's own window or something...at least then normal stuff will be semi-ok.
Haruspex77 wrote:
BTW, Doc, how often do you find those waypoints good, as advertised? Some days on Bria I have gotten as bad as 50% mis-advertised vendors (empty or nothing as advertised). And that doesn't count the vague ads that only sounded like he would have what I wanted. That is the big reason I wanted a direct vendor link.
Its hit or miss. But no worse than the global map.
I would like a vendor link as well. It apparently is not technically possible yet. We'll just have to keep pushing.