Bio Engineer Archive

First the concise part:
The single biggest issue for me, once again many time outweighing any others, is the effect that AFK play has had on the profession, and on my experience in the game.
A close second is a lack of clear communication from the development team to the players of the profession. At best, we have rumors as to what's going on in the heads of the developers. We need clear posts stating, at the very least, that you're listening to us, or that you're not.

And now the drawn out explanatory part:
To elaborate on the AFK issue, it has affected all different kinds of dancers in one way or another. Those wishing to play a support role find that role to be filled by buffbots. Those wishing to socialize have found a severely dwindled number of people to socialize with, as they are surrounded by players who aren't there, and those who would come into the cantina, chatting while getting healed, just go to the buffbot instead. Those wishing to put on performances find it hard to promote events, since much of the playerbase has lost any idea that dancers are more than AFK NPCs. We really are hanging by a thread.

And that thread we have is each other. You'll find that we are an extremely tight-knit community. This is what happens when a profession becomes unviable. Those who don't care much about it will move on to something viable. Those who truly bleed entertainer blood try to hang on, getting support from others like them, hoping against hope that something will be done eventually. It's because of this that Panthu's statements are so true. You will be hard pressed to find someone posting on this forum who doesn't care about this profession as much as their real life issues. It's more than a game to us, and we don't want to be heartbroken.

Tiggs, I do hope you make a sincere effort to get to know us, beyond what you find in this thread. We have some incredible people here, not the least of which is our amazing correspondent Panthu. I think her devotion to the profession truly reflects the devotion we all feel - she's not the exception in her strong feelings for dancers, she's the rule. You'll notice this thread has a very somber tone to it. Pay attention to that, even if you see us cracking it up elsewhere. Every time I post something silly to interact with my fellow entertainers, every time I attend a Cantina Crawl or other live entertainer event, in the back of my mind behind the fun is the fear that this will die away sometime soon, and I think I speak for more than myself in that sentiment.

Others who have expressed concern about yet another ignored 'consolidation of issues' thread, Tiggs is in fact doing these for all the professions, and I would imagine so that she can drive home to herself what the issues are, instead of having to 'inherit' the information for other sources. She did a round of them a while back, and I noticed several responses to these threads from that go around. Although I'm tapping my foot impatiently in the Musician forum, I imagine the idea with only doing a few at a time is so that she can actually read and respond to each of the threads. And yes, Tiggs, since I did see you respond to your other such threads, I'll be personally holding you up to the same standard here .

Oh, and as to why I can post here, aside from Musicians sharing many of the same issues, I've dabbled in dancer, and now that I've made my alt, my character Scip will be eventually mastering Dancer as well . I'm sure I'll make an announcement post of that when I'm done re-gaining master Musician from my penance.

Message Edited by Daker-Naritus on 10-12-2004 12:39 AM

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nbd9k wrote:

uhoh guys, i think we scared her off.

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Already?

Man, that's got to be a new record, even for us!

good lord. I leave for the weekend to get married and look what I miss

Where to begin. Consumable weapons. I would like to see consumable weapons get a little more "stability" to them. I.E. A base unit and only the ammo is consumable. By making the Heavy Weapons 2 par you would aleviate alot of stress on the crafting process. (This is asuming the ammo is easier to craft than the weapon), making them more lucrative and enjoyable for crafters to make, and in turn easier to obtain and usable by us.

Grenades. Thats pretty much been covered. They really aren't worth a damn. Really. I'm not joking. Mostly, the range, damage, ham cost, size of the stacks... hhmm.. that pretty much means a grenade revamp. Some nice state effects would be nice. We are pretty much the only class that can't utilize state effects.

HAR. This has been beat to death. I'm not gonna waste my breath.

OUR ROLE. I believe our role should be front end damage. As it is now. High initial damage, low speed. However, thanks to our accuracy problems and nasty range restrictions on our specials the DPS we can dish out in a battle is far outweighted by other classes. For a full combat Hybrid profession, that seems a bit odd to me.
I also find it odd taht we require unarmed combat, but if we get up to mele range we are pretty much toast (pun intended).

What it comes down to is I'm tired of being a one trick pony (Flamethrower). I try to use my heavy weapons, but I find myself spending so much time trying to get to the optimum range for the attack (Thank you low accuracy) that I don't get off many shots and thus am ineffective.

My suggestion in a nutshell:
Roll the HAR and FT into the same tree, give the HAR a fire dot as well. (hhmm.. acid burn?)
Adjust the stats on grenades and for the love of the force, Either remove damage to the user of grenades, or add damage to the user of explosive droids. (C'mon, if it explodes, be consistent with how you guys apply the damage).
Make Heavy weapons a base weapon that holds some stats like HAM and speed, while the consumable ammo gives it the damage and accuracy. (LBC gets battery/capacitor packs, rocket launcher gets rockets, etc. etc.)
Since the HAR is rolled into the FT tree in my scenario the spare tree gets some nice defenses, including defensive/melee manuevers like a buttstroke (stun or KD). Maybe a "Utilize cover" skill that gives a small boost to dodge and block, but forces us to move slower (like walking speed)

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MaximDakaar wrote:

cold damage would be neat... to my knowledge, the sg82 is the only gun that does cold... and its a rifle..

i wouldn't go as far as to request stun damage, but.... whats with restraint? i havent seen anything with that... so why not stick us carbineer with it?

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Restraint was replaced by Lightsaber. They basically used the restraint template and slapped a new name on it.

Careful who you call "cute". Some wookiees may tear your arms off for saying that.