Hi Amber

Thanks for posting something here it is much appreciated.

I would like to add my comments to the topic and hope theyare considered constructive.

Personally i have never had a "Your seeker droid has found something interesting" and it give me anything other than a purple part, be it speeder or armour.

I do agree with some that the special item should not be a crate with four purple craft items in it or anything that you can buy on the GTN. I am doing this quest for a unique item set, the dread seed gear and expect that the special item would be a piece of that armour or a speeder part. That word is important, "unique" if you can buy it its not special.

Secondly i dont have any trouble finding green circles to point me in the direction and for 9.5k credits to help me home in on the part for 10 minutes its cheap at twice the price.

I am looking for something special, so my mentality is spend money to help me find it. If i spend 500k on boosts and i get all the amour pieces it would be money well spent!

What i am very sad about is the fact that i choose the dread seed chest at the end of the quest line, not the star forager and yet i can dig up any piece from any set, i want my random pick up selection to just be from the set i chose not random.

I dont mind getting the speeder parts,they sell well but i would like to know the chance of the speeder vs armour (which is why i am doing the quest in the first place) and is it really random across all sectors? can i get all pices on Tatooine for example?

Thank you,

I kind of hope in the future say one of your toons completes the chain. and does the heroic

then after that it would open up to your lower toons in your legacy like say i roll a new toon and get to like tat or alderaan i can look for items for a bit just take a small break from questing or pvp

Edited July 30, 2013 by stimuluspack
miss speeled word

I personnaly prefer the new system over the old one.

My only complaint about the new system is the contents of the Purple boxes which will reset the zone. Most of the time they contain just 5 Basic comms... This is a terrible reward. In another I got 5 Isotope-5's and 5 Mass manipulators. You devs really need to take a look at changing the loot tables for the random boxes.

Hello everyone,

 

Thanks for your feedback about the recent changes to the Seeker Droid! The changes that were made were done to remove the ability to endlessly acquire items, as this was not intended. Also, we wanted to be sure and allow for players to obtain the speeder parts and treasures when digging, but we are taking what you’re saying into account.

 

The system is designed to only display “Your Seeker Droid Found Something Interesting” (versus just having them find “Something”) when you find special treasure or an armor piece. There been a few comments here that indicate that when getting something interesting, that you’re obtaining other items. We’re looking for more details with regards to exactly what was obtained when the “Interesting” message pops up for you. We’ve done some investigation on our side, and this currently appears to be working correctly.

 

We agree! If you’ve had a gray item deplete a site, this is not intended and is a bug. Please be sure you file and in-game /bug to report this if it happens, and we welcome follow up posts with details for us to investigate.

 

We’ve been keeping an eye on this thread and will continue to do so. If we discover any bugs with the system, we’ll post them on the Known Issues and update you here.

 

 

I can get a bunch of green items running around low level worlds and get a lot more cash than drops from the seeker driod mechanic now. I guess this is another piece of content in the circular file. I am already hearing guildies dropping the seeker mission rather than waste time on it. Its a shame, you had a fun sub game that you trashed because people were making 20% of the money they would have made on daylies and spending 3 or 4 times the amount of time. I guess the only allowed way to make money in this game is daylies

Hmmm, this is even more of an incentive not to do this. The greens and blues weren't even worth my time doing this, this makes it even less appealing.

 

This. It was tedious enough before, now I have no incentive for this. Just another slap in the face..glad they focus their energies on this stuff and not the real broken stuff.

Hello everyone,

 

Thanks for your feedback about the recent changes to the Seeker Droid! The changes that were made were done to remove the ability to endlessly acquire items, as this was not intended. Also, we wanted to be sure and allow for players to obtain the speeder parts and treasures when digging, but we are taking what you’re saying into account.

 

The system is designed to only display “Your Seeker Droid Found Something Interesting” (versus just having them find “Something”) when you find special treasure or an armor piece. There been a few comments here that indicate that when getting something interesting, that you’re obtaining other items. We’re looking for more details with regards to exactly what was obtained when the “Interesting” message pops up for you. We’ve done some investigation on our side, and this currently appears to be working correctly.

 

We agree! If you’ve had a gray item deplete a site, this is not intended and is a bug. Please be sure you file and in-game /bug to report this if it happens, and we welcome follow up posts with details for us to investigate.

 

We’ve been keeping an eye on this thread and will continue to do so. If we discover any bugs with the system, we’ll post them on the Known Issues and update you here.

 

 

1) I suspected it was done to remove the ability to just dig up money. This is a bit harsh though, at least in my opinion. If you want any reasonable chance of tracking down items with your droid you need to run a booster, preferably the blue Mk II model. Those are not free, and they only last 10 minutes a pop. This activity has gone from credit neutral to a small profit per hour when you figure in the cost of those boosters to a rather unpleasant sink.

 

I also found a rather disparate amount of "not Repulsorlift" and "not Pleasure Speeder" parts after the recent patch. I dug up 2-3 Explorer and Exploiter engines, chassis, and steering mechanisms in 4 hours of digging (24 Mk II boosters). I found no Repulsorlifts and one Pleasure Speeder part (and that's the only one I've ever found). Are you sure these are dropping at balanced and expected rates?

 

2) Any time I found a gray item it gave me a "You found something!" message, and not "You found something interesting". Still, it matters not if it's interesting or not. I am forced to Seek the same way as I don't know what's at the end of the trail. No matter what I dig up I am still following little green hints to see if I can dig up anything. Putting gray items in the result pool for digging something up, whether or not it is interesting, is very much Not Fun.

 

These items should be removed from the system. Spending time to hunt down a green rep item or a blue crate with crafting items that shall be vendored is frustrating enough. There is no reason to give anyone a trail to follow that leads to a gray piece of literal junk.

Edited July 31, 2013 by BobaFaceroll

I've been at it for about an hour now and all I've found is speeder parts which were meant to be rarer than the Dreadseed/Starforger sets, whatever they've done I want it back the way it was, least I found the bloody armour and made a few credits off the rest of the junk I found

 

At least before I was able to make some credits when doing the searches. Now, I'm spending large amounts of time searching an area for nothing -- no rewards (hilts, mods or even grey material which I could have sold off). Whoever complained and led to us having this patch forced upon us has ruined a part of the game which I didn't mind too much.

I can get a bunch of green items running around low level worlds and get a lot more cash than drops from the seeker driod mechanic now. I guess this is another piece of content in the circular file. I am already hearing guildies dropping the seeker mission rather than waste time on it. Its a shame, you had a fun sub game that you trashed because people were making 20% of the money they would have made on daylies and spending 3 or 4 times the amount of time. I guess the only allowed way to make money in this game is daylies

 

Agreed - the seeker droid has now been ruined.

Hello everyone,

 

Thanks for your feedback about the recent changes to the Seeker Droid! The changes that were made were done to remove the ability to endlessly acquire items, as this was not intended. Also, we wanted to be sure and allow for players to obtain the speeder parts and treasures when digging, but we are taking what you’re saying into account.

 

...

We agree! If you’ve had a gray item deplete a site, this is not intended and is a bug. Please be sure you file and in-game /bug to report this if it happens, and we welcome follow up posts with details for us to investigate.

 

We’ve been keeping an eye on this thread and will continue to do so. If we discover any bugs with the system, we’ll post them on the Known Issues and update you here.

 

 

Thanks Amber for the feedback.

 

I've done the seeker droid missions more than a few times and never once had a grey item deplete an area. So, I don't know where that came from. Yes, we did get grey items -- but we could sell those items off like the hilts/mods/enhancements. (They don't appear anymore.) And, there was usually a blue item "at the end of the trail" that led to the area being depleted (usually about a level 132-4 item).

 

I'm very sad that the patch took away the fishing expedition experience and reduced it to a race (over a long period of time) for one single item. I spent 30 minutes on Saturday getting nothing back, only to have someone else claim the interesting item in the area. The droid used to be a fun/tolerable diversion when doing the odd side quest. Now, it's at the point where it is not worth my time anymore.

I think the 'points green, red, green' is a side-effect of the patch too. Zoning in worked just fine before 2.2.3.

 

I don't really see the 'infinite items' argument. I get infinite items doing dailies. I get infinite items killing random thrash. It's pretty much what MMORPG's thrive on not? So why was it a problem here. Are some of those treasurse (swayers, elite unwatching) even in the game anymore. They've becomen very scarce on the GTN post-2.2.3. Also the grey drops inbetween finds where good, kept you going, gave you some cash, made it a real treasure hunt rather than the 'zone on item' it is now. And while it could be annoying to have a find be a green item, it beats getting 5 credit thrash you get now.

 

I don't mind certain items to the loottables, being the 'regular loot', as long as it isn't tainted by thrash. The thrash can be fine outside of the loot as random extra as it was before. Can't really comment on the treasure since I didn't really bother digging it up anymore post-2.2.3. Too much not fun I rather spend elsewhere. Which is a shame, since I really took a fancy to seeker droid finding the one week I got to play it pre-2.2.3. So much my friend kept complaining about me seeking rather than questing with him. Now, no longer an issue.

But for all the wrong reasons...

While you're at it, could you fix the locational direction ring? It continually was telling me there was something in a particular direction then goes red and not finding anything.

 

Dear Amber and BW-team,

 

please have a look at this quoted bug. If not the new "reward" system, then this is definitely dragging me away from using the seeker droid (in fact, it did already drag me away).

 

Especially the area in the Dune Sea (starship wreck) seems to be heavily effected by this. About every 3rd green arrow suddenly goes red after a little while (deplected this area 3 times last week and it was always the same). I even started thinking: "Is this a new mechanic in order to prevent bots? Maybe I took too many too little steps and the engine considered me as a bot. Then I took bigger steps all the time and found my grey interesting item." This would at least explain why they say "working as intended".

 

Anyway, I can also confirm the following:

 

Interesting item = grey trash

Interesting item = monster (what do these do underground in the first place? How do they breathe there?)

 

I also got 3 x the Star Forager gauntlets on one particular site (either on Tatooine or Alderaan, don't remember), before a speeder part deplected it.

 

I do not mind reputation items and boosts. I even am fine with getting basic comms. I don't like getting useless crafting items and grey items though.

 

For me, my main interest in digging were the mods. I didn't want them in order to make credits, but solely for using with my 8 chars + all their companions (most of them without any gear, because I don't use these comps, but it feels good to know that they are protected). So, for me personally, if you would add back "special mods" which are bound to legacy, I would be happy. But I suppose this is a too individual request. I mentioned it anyway.

 

In any case, at the moment, I have no motivation to keep digging anymore. One main reason is the above quoted bug (if it is a bug).

First, thanks for the feedback .

 

But I join with those who'd ask you to reconsider. If you don't want to drop Mods, find some alternative: Crafting stuff that is actually useful, companion-gifts, credit-boxes, more comms, silly but technically sellable consumables (fireworks, one-use javagrams, something that makes sparkles, something that makes funny sounds... price those at a halfway-decent resale-price for the vendor, too, perhaps?).

Seriously, if you ask around the community or even around the SWTOR-team, you are bound to find SOMETHING that's fun and won't break game-economy.

Also, as others pointed out: if you can grab a whole lot of cash by killign random stuff, why not at least get us grab the roughly same amount by digging random stuff?

 

There really has to be some middle-ground between the two extremes you had now.

wait a sec...

 

The mounts are supposed to be rarer then the armor?

 

I'm admittedly new to using seekers. I just started this past weekend. I've spent about 3 days farming because i love the "concept" of treasuring hunting.

 

In three days i have found:

 

16 speeder parts. (2 complete exploiter speeders, lots of explorer parts, and 2 pleasure parts)

7 blue crates with crafting mats i dont use and dont sell for much.

19 green seeker droid buffs. (range increases, or the insta cast buff)

30+ grey trash items selling for 5 credits each.

 

ZERO ARMOR PARTS

 

the two pleasure craft parts were the "Special treasures" that depleted the zone. The ONLY positive to all this wasted time, was the warzone comms security chest i found.

 

All three speeders are Fugly. its cheaper to buy crafting parts on GTN or via missions. green buffs dont actually make seeker tracking more enjoyable as the directional ring is so inaccurate its a joke.

And grey trash items for 5 credits? really? trash items at 50-55 sell for a few hundred each! there is no reason why they shouldn't be 52+ level trash items. you can't seeker droid till then..so its not like its a cheat for low levels to get higher credit earnings.

 

 

Seeker droids are effectively a waste of time. Which is a pity because the concept is ingenious way of adding a treasure hunting feature.

Fix the loot table, add loot worth chasing, and give people a reason to wanna keep doing it.

 

Mounts available suck

Armor sucks

crafting mats suck

trash isn't worth anything!

HUGE TIME WASTER!

 

Suggestion?

-add various other loot types. various quality. some possibly exclusive

-make the trash lvl appropriate

-add comms as a possible loot find

-add enemy mobs as a possible loot. dig up something that wants to kill you. (level appropriate)

-add high lvl rare monsters that are a challenge but offer a rare loot if you survive

-add rare lore items or something with no REAL value or benifit but adds "flavor" to the story. (like the datacube things)

 

The mechanic is a great idea...but needs to be fixed to have it actually worth while! Please consider these and or other suggestions and revamp this! Treasure hunting and PVP are the two biggest things me and many others love about MMOs!

I don't post on here often, but after reading the comments I felt I needed to weigh in. My experience yesterday (spent all day doing seeker digging) was this, on some planets it is impossible to find an area to dig on any instance because they are already spent and the CD on the areas is very long. My suggestion would be that each player can deplete the area, but then it is depleted for that player, for the entire day. Allowing each player a chance at each area, once per day. My other comment was regarding the "found something" vs "found something interesting", I have only ever gotten "junk" gray items when it says "found something", everything I got with "found something interesting" depleted the area and was at least purple quality. I think maybe some people are misreading the message. The recent changes in my opinion have made the system better.

Suggestion?

-add various other loot types. various quality. some possibly exclusive

-make the trash lvl appropriate

-add comms as a possible loot find

-add enemy mobs as a possible loot. dig up something that wants to kill you. (level appropriate)

-add high lvl rare monsters that are a challenge but offer a rare loot if you survive

-add rare lore items or something with no REAL value or benifit but adds "flavor" to the story. (like the datacube things)

 

All of this. I do get comms sometimes, but more would be nice. I also LOVE the level 10 crafting mats so don't remove those tho Level 10 only though please. I would also add that I have never found an armor piece in all the time I have been Seeking.

Edited July 31, 2013 by NovemberAllthing

I'm admittedly new to using seekers. I just started this past weekend. I've spent about 3 days farming because i love the "concept" of treasuring hunting.

Sucks to be you. Or maybe not, since you never experienced how much better it was before.

 

And it did indeed several of those things (good random thrash not as find, creatures, unique items etc.). But they snapped it's innocent little neck and replaced it with the seeker droid we have now.

 

@ Da_jon; From what I know, once an area is depleted another area on the same planet opens up. It's not CD-based and there are no 2 areas similataniously active on a planet. Also it thus can never be there is no active site on a planet. So that works fine, unless they changed that too post-2.2.3.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Hassat-Hunter

Thanks so much for your replies and continued constructive feedback and interesting conversation about Seeker Droid! As I said in my post yesterday, the developers have been monitoring this thread and are actively looking at ways to address the way the Seeker Droid digsites work.

 

In a future update, we will be doing some maintenance to the Seeker Droid to address the issue of it sometimes malfunctioning and giving you undesirable loot. Please stay tuned for additional updates as we have more information for you.

 

 

Thank you...ma'am? It's so hard to tell with forum names...

 

Anyway, the only other bug I've seen recently was zeroing in on a site (using Prototype buff that lets you tell when you are right there) only to have the deployment that should return an item instead just return a red "reposition" circle.

 

There was no one else in the area and I later depleted the site myself (4 basic comms and all I want is the Pleasure Speeder Repulsorlift) so that wasn't it either.

 

I would also ask that there be something we can do with all these unwanted bind-on-legacy items beyond vendoring them for 30 credits. GSI seems to be a big corporation, certainly they could have a "5 for 1" turn in system or something...maybe for Deployment buffs that we can currently only get from "something" results?

I too hope something is done about the items my seeker droid is finding. Using boosts to speed up deployment and boosts to find things more efficiently feel kind of wasted when you dig up a gray piece of junk. One thing I'm curious about is the actual speed at which the seeker deploys. I'd like to suggest that one of the perks for completing the quest like would be to reduce the deployment time by half.

My suggestion would be that each player can deplete the area, but then it is depleted for that player, for the entire day. Allowing each player a chance at each area, once per day.

 

This is a winning proposal; doing this alone would help offset the nerf the latest patch dropped on us players who like digging. I fully support this idea.

Edited July 31, 2013 by DAMossimo

Thanks so much for your replies and continued constructive feedback and interesting conversation about Seeker Droid! As I said in my post yesterday, the developers have been monitoring this thread and are actively looking at ways to address the way the Seeker Droid digsites work.

 

In a future update, we will be doing some maintenance to the Seeker Droid to address the issue of it sometimes malfunctioning and giving you undesirable loot. Please stay tuned for additional updates as we have more information for you.

 

Thanks Amber! Seems the change was most likely to halt BOT farming, but in the process you have alienated the user community that actually liked the Seeker Droid Missions. I tried a couple runs with my toon I'm leveling on Tat recently and the end result was pretty much what everyone described.

 

Didn't get any speeder parts, didn't even get ANY loot. I did manage to get one ARMOR, but it had me run back forth in a small area that seemed to have "Faulty" green indicator. Meaning it would point one direction and I would move 1-2 steps that way and then point me in the oppositte direction. When in reality the item was off to my right by 90 degrees. Very strange results.

 

I would love to do these missions, but the cost of consumable is crazy and the reward is no longer available. IE: The time invested is better running a FP's solo or farming dailies for CRED's instead.

I just want to say I also wish the bind to legacy gear from seeker areas at least vendor sold for more credits. I have found 4 pairs of dread seed pants in the past 2 days, and it isn't worth selling them for 30 credits a piece. Even if I could trade they to a guildie it would be fine. Feels like a waste to vendor them though.

Agreed - the seeker droid has now been ruined.

 

I would bet the devs mow their lawns with a bulldozer

spent 4 hours on tat today. I cycled between instances and the 3 digsites. before i could find mods that i could use to get mats, BoL armor that my alts could use..and greys I could sell that made me want to keep digging because it gave me a little boost. want to know what I found today?

JACK. well, i take that back...i found a grey that depleted a site and a deployment boost.

BW, I don't care what your reasons were. this was a great "treasure hunting" mini game. You screwed it up so bad. I didn't mind my seeker finding blue or green armor, because at least i could vendor those.

What we were making a few 100k an hour if we got lucky and that was bad? We do that on dailies!

I don't care if you made it so I can get speeder parts. I have one that I like...why would I want another? much less 2 more that I need to piece together?

revert it back. and fix the location ring. I have stopped doing this massive waste of time except for 1x a week on one toon for a few hours. And I am doing just to find a helm. If I find the dreadseed helm and it isn't improved...then it will be like space missions...another part of the game I don't bother with.

You pulled a Blizzard on this on BW..."fix it 'til it's broke.":(