Bio Engineer Archive
Thread: Getting to know you and your profession!
Goldy_Lhim
Tue Oct 12, 2004 8:10 am
#586
I don't think being a swordsman makes you a fake dancer. You're simply a different type of dancer. You expected dancer to benefit yourself and your groupmates and it kinda falls short. I feel exactly the same as you.
/hug Ilya
we're all in the same dancer boat.
FuschiaD
Tue Oct 12, 2004 8:15 am
#587
What do I consider to be the most debilitating aspects of the dancer profession right now? Well, it's already been said a million times, but it bears repeating: players who completely AFK the profession. They have completely ruined us. Each generation of players that comes into the game is trained to seek out the AFKers. They are taught that you have to be grouped to get a mind buff; that you don't really need to ASK for a buff, just an invite to the buff group; and that if the dancer doesn't have the AFK above their heads, they'll give them more trouble than they're worth (actually requiring payment? GAH! How dare we!)and seek out a dancer who IS AFK. These are all things I experience on a daily basis on my dancer. It's frustrating, disheartening and it makes me seriously question the future of entertainers in this game. The amount of disrespect for entertainers is HUGE. We are not a viable profession at this time, and THAT is the biggest thing I would like to see changed.
Also, we need to be able to buff ourselves. The fact that we can't is simply ridiculous. You found a way for doctors to buff themselves without gaining experience; time to find a way for us to do it too.
MadDog36
Tue Oct 12, 2004 8:16 am
#588
MOST pressing issue is to make the Launcher Pistol useful. As it stands right now, in order to actually use it effectively you need to go BH or Pistoleer. We havea weapon that has no specials!
2nd most pressing issue? Try to get the Heavy Weapons SEAs to work. Increased Speed and Accuracy would help out on the consumable weapon line tremendously.
Kreistor
Tue Oct 12, 2004 9:30 am
#589
Tiggs,
First and foremost, welcome to our forums!
Thank you so much for reading through our stickied thread and, instead of just lurking, coming in here, braving the storm and asking EACH of us to give you our personal opinion as to what we feel are the major issues with the Dancer Profession. I seriously look forward to seeing you here (If our resident troll and one-star bandit doesn't drive you away of course 
)
You've heard many opinions as to what our greatest issues are. All are valid, some more than others in my opinion. But the one that stands out the most is the one I'll mention here:
Unattended play.
Not only because it makes all the other non-entertainers see us as just the vending machine healing and buffing profession. Not only because it fills a place meant for social activities with annoying and repetative spam, but because it affects far more than just the Dancers. It affects Musicians in the same way. It gave us the SEA tape macro looters. It gave us the AFK combat macroers, the balchony-jedi, and many many other ways of destroying the gameplay within SWG. The entertainers are just the ones that are more visible because we need to be in a visible place for it to be fully effective.
I will also post another problem that others haven't touched on yet, or at least I haven't seen it in this post. Because of all that's happened, with the expanded use and acceptance (from the player base and apparently from the Dev Team) of Buffbots, many live entertainers have left the common Buffbot hangouts. Mostly the NPC cantinas. Because of this, combat profs don't bother to try to look for us Live Entertainers. They say we're "hard to find". One thing that needs to be seriously addressed to help with this is not only unattended play but our Dancer Registration system. People need to have a quick way to find us, and that system really seems to be the only one.
I believe that revamped registration system combined with a more strict AFK function and policy would be of tremendous help to our profession.
Again, thank you SO much for coming in here and asking the question Tiggs! Please please PLEASE don't be a stranger!
First and foremost, welcome to our forums!
Thank you so much for reading through our stickied thread and, instead of just lurking, coming in here, braving the storm and asking EACH of us to give you our personal opinion as to what we feel are the major issues with the Dancer Profession. I seriously look forward to seeing you here (If our resident troll and one-star bandit doesn't drive you away of course )You've heard many opinions as to what our greatest issues are. All are valid, some more than others in my opinion. But the one that stands out the most is the one I'll mention here:
Unattended play.
Not only because it makes all the other non-entertainers see us as just the vending machine healing and buffing profession. Not only because it fills a place meant for social activities with annoying and repetative spam, but because it affects far more than just the Dancers. It affects Musicians in the same way. It gave us the SEA tape macro looters. It gave us the AFK combat macroers, the balchony-jedi, and many many other ways of destroying the gameplay within SWG. The entertainers are just the ones that are more visible because we need to be in a visible place for it to be fully effective.
I will also post another problem that others haven't touched on yet, or at least I haven't seen it in this post. Because of all that's happened, with the expanded use and acceptance (from the player base and apparently from the Dev Team) of Buffbots, many live entertainers have left the common Buffbot hangouts. Mostly the NPC cantinas. Because of this, combat profs don't bother to try to look for us Live Entertainers. They say we're "hard to find". One thing that needs to be seriously addressed to help with this is not only unattended play but our Dancer Registration system. People need to have a quick way to find us, and that system really seems to be the only one.
I believe that revamped registration system combined with a more strict AFK function and policy would be of tremendous help to our profession.
Again, thank you SO much for coming in here and asking the question Tiggs! Please please PLEASE don't be a stranger!
MichailArris
Tue Oct 12, 2004 9:51 am
#590
Greetings Tiggs,
Glad you was able to make to our little corner of the forums.
Most everyone has covered the main problems with the Commando profession. Butsince I play mostly on the Test Center, I have characters thatinclude a Master Commando and a Master Weaponsmith. So I've spent quite a bit of time building the weapons usable to a commando.
But basically here is my take on the profession. When I first mastered the commando profession we had the 2.5x melee penalty, otherwise any thing that dealt melee damage (most any mobs and NPC's and Player Characters that went melee). If a mob or player hit another profession for 200 damage, those same mobs or playerswould hit a Commando for 500 damage. And since all our specials would only work in melee range, we died more than most other professions. But that was eventually taken out, but what has transpired since then has still made it tough to be a commando considering the skill points needed to master the profession.
Plus most ofthe new content (Corvettes and Deathwatch Bunker) has fairly much rendered our profession useless in a group going to these areas. Since these new Mobs and NPC's have both high resistance (to Heat and Acid damage) and Armor Resist 2 (or 3).And our normal weapons (Flame Thrower and Heavy Acid Rifle) have noArmor Piercing,this usually tends to mean we are the first to die.
And as a Weaponsmith,I can say the manufacturing requirements for the more popular Commando consumable weapons are quite high, which translates into a high cost for these type of weapons. It takes 9 factory runs to make a crate of rocket launchers. And the schematic itself is messed up by using proton grenades that are Heat Damage, and the Rocket Launcher itself is blast damage.But the resource and manufacturing requirements by themselves keep many weaponsmiths from providing most of these Commando specific weapons on a regular basis.
Grenades are somewhat easier to produce, but with their high HAM costs and low ideal range keeps most Commandosfrom using them. But on the other hand Combat Medics have been tossing diease and poison packs for farther distances, with better accuracy, less HAM costs and deals out more damage, than a Master Commando tossing a comparatively damage grenade.
So basically we have been waiting for sometime for changes (Combat Revamp) to come to our profession to make it useful again.
jopenack
Tue Oct 12, 2004 10:12 am
#591
wow a red name lol cool
Truth is Tiggs in my opinion the creature stats being lowered was the biggest mistake and issue in the game overall.
Back when the stats were changed proffessions weren't as powerful and people complained about ch having too much power and the dabblers stacking ch onto they're main proffession.Buffsand good armorwere notaround in the early days. Then doc's started making uber buffs, comp armor was being crafted with 80% kin protection. so considering peopleare now supermen/women the lowering of pet stats just made everyone that much stronger but weaking us.
its kinda funny because considering the time frame of the creature rebalance and the timeframe of buffs and comp armor becomming available it would seem that no one sat back and said wait if we do this then when we finish thiat we shall create a larger inbalance.
since the combat revamp is a very far off project then quickest and best fix for the game is to reset the creature stats back to what they once were and depending on what the rebalance throws us I might suggest leaving them at the original levels.
since the ch structure tree has been changed and xp grinding for ch is the longest 2nd to Jedi only I would not worry about dabblers.
Thank you for your visit here, hopefully we shall see red names here more often :-)
Message Edited by jopenack on 10-12-2004 01:49 PM
Message Edited by jopenack on 10-12-2004 01:51 PM
slave138
Tue Oct 12, 2004 10:52 am
#592
Maybe I'm a little hyper-critical, but I think these requests to be able to tame adults as anything other than a one-time quest are ridiculous. If they let CHs tame anything at any time (under max CL),everyone would be running around with Bull Rancors, there would be no market for pets at all, and the non-CHs would start screaming for nerfs all over again - not to mention it would strip all the enjoyment most of us get from actually looking for the more elusivepets.
I don't know how familiar any of you are with pen-n-paper RPG terminology, but these kinds of requests are nothing but more"Monty Haul" in a game that is already going a little too much in that direction. Things are given too easily already - devaluing accomplishments and generally making the game pretty boring.
Pluto9Moon
Tue Oct 12, 2004 11:00 am
#593
Tiggs,
This is my list.
1) The Combat Revamp. We were prevamped over a year ago.
2) Tivotenook and SkyPreacher1. Tivo needs to be in the Sandbox. I will not go into the history. Message me if you need an update on it. Skypreacher's permaban needs lifted.
3) The Frenzied Graul is marked Tamable. Yet there is no reliable source of it having been tamed in the past year.
4) Storage. As per my message to you I believe the Corral Thread offers this at minimum.
5) A niche. We did this Know Your Role thing for TH. We are now in a state of chaos and have been so seince being prevamped. What we really need from the Devs is honest communication about the role of CH. Are we a combat class? We have no real support methods other than creating useless mounts.
6) Bugs. You have seen the bug list. It needs addressed.
7) Making mounts useful. There is another thread.
This is my list.
1) The Combat Revamp. We were prevamped over a year ago.
2) Tivotenook and SkyPreacher1. Tivo needs to be in the Sandbox. I will not go into the history. Message me if you need an update on it. Skypreacher's permaban needs lifted.
3) The Frenzied Graul is marked Tamable. Yet there is no reliable source of it having been tamed in the past year.
4) Storage. As per my message to you I believe the Corral Thread offers this at minimum.
5) A niche. We did this Know Your Role thing for TH. We are now in a state of chaos and have been so seince being prevamped. What we really need from the Devs is honest communication about the role of CH. Are we a combat class? We have no real support methods other than creating useless mounts.
6) Bugs. You have seen the bug list. It needs addressed.
7) Making mounts useful. There is another thread.
PoetDancer
Tue Oct 12, 2004 11:13 am
#594
I share Ub-ick's sentiment as well, Tiggs. Welcome to our board.
If you have read this thread, then you know what our issues are. But I'd like to ask you developers a question, if I may. You don't need to answer it. Its more of something to ponder.
What do the developers think is wrong with the profession? Because I'd like to help you, Tiggs. I really would. But we don't even know if we are playing this profession correctly. Do you and the developers enjoy what entertainment looks like on the servers? Or if you don't enjoy it, do you at least think that nothing is wrong?
If you think everything is working as intended right now, then that tells me something. It tells me that we are foolish enough to believe that this class was meant to be played by a live player. BecauseI wasunder the impression that you somehow envisioned dancers being live and at the keys. It seems only natural to think so.
But to tell you the truth Tiggs, I am beginning to have my doubts.
The fact of the matter is that unattended, macro driven entertainer alts can do so much more than us. They are far more effective mimicing live play than any dancer is live.
Because we cannot be available 24/7. They are.
We do not wait for hours on end dancing away for nobody on the off chance someone may need us. They do.
We have the desire to explore other facets of the game, rather than the mere cantina function. They have no such desire.
We havea needfor credits and items unrelated to our cantina function. They are provided everything they need, and nothing more by their primary account.
Audiences always have to ask us to give a buff, and there is always uncertainty when dealing with the intersubjective nature of the patron/client relationship in the live game. An uncertainty that is mitigated by the automated buffer, who asks for nothing, times their routines for maximum efficiency, and spams automated and non-immersive commands telling the patron what to do at every moment of the buffing process.
There are so many advantages afforded to unattended entertainment characters in the game system that I am beginning to wonder if this is what the developers wanted in this class all along. Is it? Only you developers know the answer.
Because if you could simply tellme that the development staff intended this to be a non-playable profession, then I would thank you for your guidance to me, and select a profession more suited to enjoying the rich world you have to offer.
Right now, guild leaders, second account subscribers, and ambitious player cities have more than enough reason to make adancer character. However,nobody has any reason right nowto play a dancer. Sound like a contradiction? It is only contradictory if you and the rest of the development staff are under the assumption that pressing a hotkey to automate a dancer character to influence the game world the entire day away from the monitor, mouse, and keys is "play" to you all.
A lot in Star Wars Galaxies do. I do not. It simply does not correspond to any common sense notion of play, rightly understood. And if this is what I am supposed to do to use my skills to maximum effect, then I am afraid I will have to leave this profession.
So I am sorry, Tiggs, if this post was not what you wanted. But I really am at a loss at how to help you. Because I don't even know if I am doing the right thing by playing this profession at the keys. I thought I was, but seeing as how unattended second instances can do the mechanical functions far better than I can, I really have to wonder if I am doing something wrong by playing.
So when I go to a cantina patron and say, "Hello tall, dark, and scaley," am I doing the trandoshan a disservice by making the attempt to create ambiance? Or does this attempt to play live merely cause more problems due to the fact that I refuse to not be available for him as an automated second instance at all hours, while I log on to a second account? These questions sound silly, but they are questions we have been having for months now, with no indication by the developers of what they do and do not want to see in the venues.
joined42904
Tue Oct 12, 2004 11:22 am
#595
I love CH on my alt. I let the creatures tank and use rifleman from far away while mostly gathering hides for armorsmithing.
I've noticed that I get about the same results if I'm buffed whether the creatures tank or not, and while I'm not MCH, I am 3343. (Too much time on my armorsmith and not enough on my ranger.)
Creatures should be useful. The right creatures should be able to turn the tide of a battle. No more than other classes can, but the notion of some melee types being as able to tank as they are seems a little off to me. High end content should kill off a few tanks, whether creatures or melee stackers. And as folks don't particularly care to die all that much, there would be more demand for creatures as there was in the past.
I suppose in fairness there should be two types of BEd pets. The "tank" pet with little damage output but toughness and ability to absorb damage equal to that of any player. Use of the tank pet would be primarily by ranged creature handlers who would actually do most of the killing themselves (which is my current strategy) but who could potentially get by with lesser armor, more specials, higher regen of specials due to not having to take damage themselves such that the creatures are actually useful in combat and aid in killing things albeit indirectly. Type two pets would be the "slasher" or high damage pet which though deadly isn't quite as hard to kill as a player. Mobs would preferentially attack slasher pets to tank pets so that you couldn't just have two out and send in the tank first. This is somewhat in the BE system as it is now.
BE levels are totally borked. This needs to be fixed. If on no other basis than just having someone with a sense of fairness look at stored pets and assign levels to them. I promise you that one human being assigning levels (assuming familiarity with the game) would result in a better CL assessment of BE pets than the current levels assigned to them.
One of the main reasons I don't get involved in PVP is because CH is widely regarded as "useless" in PVP. It shouldn't be so. And I'm not sure exactly how to solve that problem due to the fact that folks can use CH with another elite combat profession. Some folks have posited that CHs should have to hold a "creature controlling device" so as to not be able to get the benefit of two professions, and I certainly oppose that. Surely there is some benefit in being master elite combat/doctor. Or master ranged/master melee. Or a stacker. CH should get some similar benefit. We don't really seem to now.
One thing I think is really missing is a CH bond with a particular pet. Particularly a wild pet. It would be great if wild pets could, over long time, be given sufficient enhancements, if used sufficiently, to be better than the best BE pet. This could be done in such a way as to not dramatically increase CH power but to still give a lot of satisfaction and "content." BEs could be involved in the process, and perhaps BEd food or genetically engineered viral DNA enhancers etc could be involved in the process. So could an interesting quest and a choice of special animal. It shouldn't be a situation where everyone would automatically choose a rancor or another single creature. I can imagine a gurrcat growing and becoming quite fearsome...but still the same creature the CH used so often while levelling. (The special creature of course shouldn't abide by the normal vitality rules.)
These are just a few suggestions.
Rawanuk
Tue Oct 12, 2004 11:59 am
#596
Well, like others, I think one of the principal problems is indeed combat. Creatures are a joke. In both PVP/PVE it is weak. There are also few strong pets, and what strong pets there are, are so rare it takes months to find. Therefor CHs don't even bother using them for fear of them losing Vitality or just normal Deterioration (since pets deteriorate even without losing Vitality, you know.) MCH is a joke in combat, for "Oooh"s and "Ahhh"s rather than a serious member. The only thing they can be occasionally useful for is tanking for Rifleman, and even then they don't last long unless there are other party members healing them often.
Another issue is that SOE suddenly has been showing some interest in our forums, and they have banned a ton of our most affluent members, or forced others to quit due to restrictions hindering their former activities. SOE, Tiggs, you guys don't seem to realize that this is how we, basically, all are. We are emotional because we have spent over a year now with a profession that is deprived. For a long time, our forums have been all but ignored by SOE, hence why it has always been filled with what you call the "Trolls" and "Flammers". And when you finally look, the CH forum norm is banneable offense.We are essentially all like in mind and show some anger towards SOE. We are like soccer moms who become raging demons when the the referee doesn't card some kid on the other team for kickingour child in the nads. We howl in vengeful fury because we care. This isn't flamming or trolling, this is being a CH. All CHs develop this mindset somewhat over time, get used to it. Don't ban, since you are merely kicking the child a few more times yourself. I am not flamming, this is just a fyi. We are filled with righteous fury, and we are forced to channel it somehow, in some means so we get the illusion that our anger will somehow beqeelledby being listened to. Rather than banning those who "Troll or Flame" here, rather talk it out with them. Listen to the words. That is essentially how CHs are, ban the whole community if you can't deal with it, really. I have been called "one of the more laid back CHs", and even I scream bloody mary every so often. The CH Forums are different from the others in that we are CHs. Get used to that we will act very differently, and will be fairly raging.
The Idea list Vertexton posted has much of what we want. Use it, since Vert has been paying attention to much of what we want other than a few proposals that he didn't include (some aren't too gratutious towards SOE, heh, or too much work).
The Idea list Vertexton posted has much of what we want. Use it, since Vert has been paying attention to much of what we want other than a few proposals that he didn't include (some aren't too gratutious towards SOE, heh, or too much work).
In addition, know this: Withholding the Combat Docs is only making us wonder if the whole reason they are being withheld is for not wanting to alienate the community. Many CHs think it is actually quite impossible to effectively balance us with others. We will, some of us think, either have a drasticly lowered CL limitwhile our Creatures are made quite stronger, or our creatures will become like they were before the first "Balance" from December. Prove us wrong. You are only managing to cause more people to wonder and become more "extreme".
Message Edited by Rawanuk on 10-12-2004 12:05 PM
Message Edited by Rawanuk on 10-12-2004 12:13 PM
Roporin
Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:29 pm
#597
Hullo and thanks for dropping by!
I'll keep this fairly brief and to the point. I took your message personally and what I would like see is the following two things (Ican live with the bugs for the time being):
1) "Tame Adult" ability that allows us to tame an adult (up to our CL whatever that may be in the future). No point doing a quest to get this (it's just a time sink).
Only allow us one tamed adult in our datapads. If we want to tame another adult - we should have to remove the existing tamed adult first. I would use this to go for special creatures that currently don't spawn babies but that I really, really want 
2) More datapad space or ways of keeping more creatures. Being creature handlers, most of us probably love animals (I do) - so it's a real heart wrench to have to make choices when you see another you want. A little over 20 is really too few considering the number of creatures out there. The ratio should be much better. If database space is not that big an issue here - then why not allow the limit to be up to our datapad.
That's it!
Sakoni (the CH).
"Never insult an alligator until you have crossed the river"
DanceRulez
Tue Oct 12, 2004 12:38 pm
#598
Hi Tiggs! First I want to thank you for taking to time to stop by our humble forum. You ask us for our opinion of the most pressing issue to our profession. Already many have given several good issues that have been troubling us for a while, but I believe the most pressing issue for us is the seeming lack of developer support and interest in our profession. Just as an example, you can probably count on one hand the number of dev posts in all three entertainer forums combined (Entertainer, Musician, and Dancer) in the last year. Yet in that time the entertainer community in general, and the dance community in particular, have faced a number of issues, some since launch over a year ago, the most serious of which have already caused several among our ranks to leave the game, and despite all our posts, PM's and in some cases letters, with maybe a couple of exceptions there has been almost no dev acknowledgement of our problems, much less any indications of resolutions to those problems.
Now before I continue, let me give credit where credit is due. There was once the issue of a CSR who gave a profession acknowledgement badge to a buffbot, an entertainer that is not even being played by a person but rather by a macro, and after there was sufficient outcry, Pex did make an apologetic post in the Entertainer forum about it, though there was no further word on what, if anything, was done about this incident. There was also the one time that TH made a post or two offering a partial solution to the automated buffing problem, but this was after we had been complaining about this critical, game-breaking problem for months, and even then it was never posted in any entertainer forum for us to find easily, but rather in the In Concept forum or some other place like that. Now you might want to point out the fairly recent announcement about the decision to remove the recursive macros. While most of us here probably support this decision as far as the benefits vs the disadvantages, we never asked for a fix on this scale, and we also realize that it was done more to address a number of issues affecting several aspects of the game rather than simply the AFK issues that affect our professions. However even with this, we have yet to hear any further word on when we might expect to see this change, and continue to have to deal with the problems caused by buffbots and AFK entertainers.
Now granted we haven't been completely ignored by the devs. We have gotten the addition of a /denyservice command to help control who we give our services to. We have also gotten mind buffs possibly in response to concerns about our financial viability (though I suspect it was more likely an intended mechanic that just got added later). There is even the hopefully imminent entertainer quest with the promise of a new song and dance (though as of the time I write this it has yet to make it to live). However, by in large our concerns regarding the most pressing issues of our professions go virtually unheeded and unanswered by the devs. Buffbots and AFK entertainers probably do the most damage to our profession in terms of our image to other players and our financial viability. We have been begging for a solution to this problem for months, and several entertainers have either given up the profession or left the game entirely based primarily on this one problem, yet it still has not been solved. While there has been a solution proposed, we are still forced to deal with it daily and have no idea when it might finally be resolved. We've even tried asking for help from CSR's but they do nothing for us, and when we try to do something to help ourselves, the CSR's actually back the buffbots and accuse us of griefing them, as though an automated bot with a command to join any group can be "griefed". It's things like this that only go to show that no one is looking out for us - the people trying to actively play and enjoy these professions.
As annoying as the bots are, it's not the only issue that has gone unresolved. Some of our base dances (formal and lyrical AND apparently our upcoming first new dance) are broken in respect to the outside observer and have been since launch, but our requests for a fix have gone unacknowledged. Many of our dances don't even have a full set of 8 different flourishes namely lyrical, and all the exotics. Poplock and formal have had 4 new flourishes added to them to fill out the full 8, but these new additions were done using only hand animation techniques as opposed to the more realistic looking motion capture and it shows. These new animations look very cartoonish compared to the original ones, and are generally not useful for us when we want to try to combine our flourishes into a routine or a show. We still have no idea whether the devs are going to do anything about this. Even our buff system is buggy. Neither we nor our customers have any way of knowing for sure how our buffs are progressing or ultimately whether they even going to take. Sometimes they don't come out full and sometimes they don't come out at all, and we don't know why. Still we have no idea if the devs have heard of this problem or whether they will do anything about it. We have long been asking for new forms of content in the game, some form of "Fame" system, or some improvement to our Ent mission terminals, but aside from this upcoming Hutt Casino/ent quest thing (which while appreciated, still by all accounts sounds like a one time quest, like a themepark, and adds no continuing content to the game), we still don't know if the devs have any bigger ideas for our place in this game. We've been asking for things like props, enhanced dance sychronization commands, and enhanced group control commands to increase our ability to turn our dance moves more into a show for a long time, yet we have no idea if the devs would even consider such things. When the new FS quests came out and we asked where support for entertainers was in the quests we got no answer. When the issue of our new dance or song requiring 400k XP when we might use that same XP for FS skill conversion or when no other profession must spend XP for new content, we again got no answer.
Now I know that there are somewhere around 35 or so different professions as well as game bugs, new content and any number of other issues that you devs must have to deal with, but with respect to issues concerning Jedi, combat, GCW, there seems to be plenty of dev responses, feedback, and concern. I can follow the Dev Tracker and see any number of dev posts in other forums or concerning other problems - sometimes even just friendly banter. Any posts in our forums or about our problems are all but nonexistent. I personally think that we entertainers are some of the most creative and fun players in the game. We've come up with numerous suggestions for fixes for our problems or new forms of content that we'd like to see, but they never recieve any acknowledgement from any dev. Are we really asking too much for a dev to occasionally drop in and say "Hey, we'll look into that issue," or "we're trying to get a fix out for that," or "that's a good idea, I'll bring that up to the team," or "while that would be a great thing to do, we just can't accomodate it right now," - something along those lines? Even if the devs just made better use of the correspondents it would be an improvement. We ents have some of the best correspondents representing us, and I'm sure Panthu does a great job at presenting our problems to the dev team, but while she may be privvy to certain information in advance, she never, or at least rarely, is allowed to release anything to us until a dev or someone says something first somewhere else - like an interview, or article or some other forum. Why not make better use of the correspondents you have to release information back to us if the devs themselves can't or won't? It would be so much more satisfying for us and help us to feel as through our problems are at least being considered if someone in some authority position could just tell us which problems are being worked on, which ones are being considered, or which ones can't be addressed either now or at all.
That is why I think that dev communication is our most pressing issue. Now, on a side note, I have been paying some attention to your "get to know you" posts on the various profession forums, and I don't know whether it's by pure chance, or perhaps a concerted effort on your part, but I would like to thank you for stopping by at least one of our ent forums early on in your inquiry process. I think it could have made this perceived communication problem even worse if you hadn't stoppd by any of our forums before you got near the bottom of your list. I would also like to thank you for taking the time to ask us for our opinions and considering our input.
Now before I continue, let me give credit where credit is due. There was once the issue of a CSR who gave a profession acknowledgement badge to a buffbot, an entertainer that is not even being played by a person but rather by a macro, and after there was sufficient outcry, Pex did make an apologetic post in the Entertainer forum about it, though there was no further word on what, if anything, was done about this incident. There was also the one time that TH made a post or two offering a partial solution to the automated buffing problem, but this was after we had been complaining about this critical, game-breaking problem for months, and even then it was never posted in any entertainer forum for us to find easily, but rather in the In Concept forum or some other place like that. Now you might want to point out the fairly recent announcement about the decision to remove the recursive macros. While most of us here probably support this decision as far as the benefits vs the disadvantages, we never asked for a fix on this scale, and we also realize that it was done more to address a number of issues affecting several aspects of the game rather than simply the AFK issues that affect our professions. However even with this, we have yet to hear any further word on when we might expect to see this change, and continue to have to deal with the problems caused by buffbots and AFK entertainers.
Now granted we haven't been completely ignored by the devs. We have gotten the addition of a /denyservice command to help control who we give our services to. We have also gotten mind buffs possibly in response to concerns about our financial viability (though I suspect it was more likely an intended mechanic that just got added later). There is even the hopefully imminent entertainer quest with the promise of a new song and dance (though as of the time I write this it has yet to make it to live). However, by in large our concerns regarding the most pressing issues of our professions go virtually unheeded and unanswered by the devs. Buffbots and AFK entertainers probably do the most damage to our profession in terms of our image to other players and our financial viability. We have been begging for a solution to this problem for months, and several entertainers have either given up the profession or left the game entirely based primarily on this one problem, yet it still has not been solved. While there has been a solution proposed, we are still forced to deal with it daily and have no idea when it might finally be resolved. We've even tried asking for help from CSR's but they do nothing for us, and when we try to do something to help ourselves, the CSR's actually back the buffbots and accuse us of griefing them, as though an automated bot with a command to join any group can be "griefed". It's things like this that only go to show that no one is looking out for us - the people trying to actively play and enjoy these professions.
As annoying as the bots are, it's not the only issue that has gone unresolved. Some of our base dances (formal and lyrical AND apparently our upcoming first new dance) are broken in respect to the outside observer and have been since launch, but our requests for a fix have gone unacknowledged. Many of our dances don't even have a full set of 8 different flourishes namely lyrical, and all the exotics. Poplock and formal have had 4 new flourishes added to them to fill out the full 8, but these new additions were done using only hand animation techniques as opposed to the more realistic looking motion capture and it shows. These new animations look very cartoonish compared to the original ones, and are generally not useful for us when we want to try to combine our flourishes into a routine or a show. We still have no idea whether the devs are going to do anything about this. Even our buff system is buggy. Neither we nor our customers have any way of knowing for sure how our buffs are progressing or ultimately whether they even going to take. Sometimes they don't come out full and sometimes they don't come out at all, and we don't know why. Still we have no idea if the devs have heard of this problem or whether they will do anything about it. We have long been asking for new forms of content in the game, some form of "Fame" system, or some improvement to our Ent mission terminals, but aside from this upcoming Hutt Casino/ent quest thing (which while appreciated, still by all accounts sounds like a one time quest, like a themepark, and adds no continuing content to the game), we still don't know if the devs have any bigger ideas for our place in this game. We've been asking for things like props, enhanced dance sychronization commands, and enhanced group control commands to increase our ability to turn our dance moves more into a show for a long time, yet we have no idea if the devs would even consider such things. When the new FS quests came out and we asked where support for entertainers was in the quests we got no answer. When the issue of our new dance or song requiring 400k XP when we might use that same XP for FS skill conversion or when no other profession must spend XP for new content, we again got no answer.
Now I know that there are somewhere around 35 or so different professions as well as game bugs, new content and any number of other issues that you devs must have to deal with, but with respect to issues concerning Jedi, combat, GCW, there seems to be plenty of dev responses, feedback, and concern. I can follow the Dev Tracker and see any number of dev posts in other forums or concerning other problems - sometimes even just friendly banter. Any posts in our forums or about our problems are all but nonexistent. I personally think that we entertainers are some of the most creative and fun players in the game. We've come up with numerous suggestions for fixes for our problems or new forms of content that we'd like to see, but they never recieve any acknowledgement from any dev. Are we really asking too much for a dev to occasionally drop in and say "Hey, we'll look into that issue," or "we're trying to get a fix out for that," or "that's a good idea, I'll bring that up to the team," or "while that would be a great thing to do, we just can't accomodate it right now," - something along those lines? Even if the devs just made better use of the correspondents it would be an improvement. We ents have some of the best correspondents representing us, and I'm sure Panthu does a great job at presenting our problems to the dev team, but while she may be privvy to certain information in advance, she never, or at least rarely, is allowed to release anything to us until a dev or someone says something first somewhere else - like an interview, or article or some other forum. Why not make better use of the correspondents you have to release information back to us if the devs themselves can't or won't? It would be so much more satisfying for us and help us to feel as through our problems are at least being considered if someone in some authority position could just tell us which problems are being worked on, which ones are being considered, or which ones can't be addressed either now or at all.
That is why I think that dev communication is our most pressing issue. Now, on a side note, I have been paying some attention to your "get to know you" posts on the various profession forums, and I don't know whether it's by pure chance, or perhaps a concerted effort on your part, but I would like to thank you for stopping by at least one of our ent forums early on in your inquiry process. I think it could have made this perceived communication problem even worse if you hadn't stoppd by any of our forums before you got near the bottom of your list. I would also like to thank you for taking the time to ask us for our opinions and considering our input.
Message Edited by DanceRulez on 10-12-2004 10:55 AM