Creature Handler Archive
Thread: upcoming changes
Panthu wrote:
I even found quotes from Holo saying he would let Entertainers become active healers if that's what we wanted... it was explained to me though that this was not actually ever his intention. It was just a convenient mechanic to help encourage the real goal of a Social profession - meaning our only real goal was chat and our only real reward was attention from other players (usually in the form of chat, role play interaction, and tips or gifts if we were compelling enough).
This is a little hard to believe. Oh, I am sure that's how they represented it to you, and perhaps even some select quotes from Holo seemed to make this point. The reason I find it hard to believe is that Holocron, alone among the devs I have seen on this or ANY online game to be honest, really GOT gamers -- he understood the 4 "suits" (hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades) and so on. I find it a little difficult to swallow that a guy with Holocron's sophistication about gamers and game design theory, would be blind or stupid enough to give entertainers 50% of the healing (BF + 3 of 9 health bars, or 4 of 10, with BF basically "trumping" the others, that makes roughly half) and not realize people would think of it as a "healing profession." That'd be like saying, "I didn't realize so many people would want to be a Jedi." I mean come on... He can make that statement if he wants, but I wouldn't believe that he was being honest with us -- or perhaps with himself.
Now, perhaps it was willful blindness. But again I find that a little hard to believe, given how "worldly" Holocron was about game design theory. He's one of the giants in the field, up there with E. Gary Gygax (Holo developed UO, for example, and before that worked on several MUDs, before doing SWG and then moving on to other things). It's hard to believe someone with his background can't see something that even I could see in 5 minutes with the manual... that people would consider entertainers "the other healers."
The bottom line, from a pure logic standpoint, is that you cannot give a class healing ability, and pretty much ONLY healing ability, and then say, "They're not healers." Yeah, they are, by definition. Now, maybe after 2 years the devs want to say, "Well, OK, they were healers but it didn't work, so now we're making them buffers." I find THAT a lot easier to believe then "Oh we never intended you to heal anyway, even though 3 of 6 required branches in your base + elite profession are HEALING branches." Again... come on.... saying "you weren't supposed to be healers from the get go" is not credible.
Now I don't mean it's not credible from YOU Panthu, but from the devs. They're being intellectually dishonest with all of us. Personally, I prefer honesty. If they can't make the healing work within the context of sociality, fine, SAY SO... admit it and change the prof. But pretending, just makes them look cheezy, like they are trying to wiggle out of something... Instead of admitting failure and admitting they are changing entertainment, they're trying to get us to believe that they're just fulfilling the original design, and we just never (for 2 years) understood what their design was. It's a great way for them to project the blame from where it belongs (on THEM for rotten implementation of the original design) onto the helpless victims (US, the people who have no choice but to play the game they gave us, which gave us no role other than to be healers, for the most part).
Essentially what they're saying is, "Half your prof is based on healing, but even so you should've always known you were never supposed to be healers, so now when we take it away you should not be upset." Again... this is simply not credible, and it is intellectually dishonest of them.
Again, not of the correspondents... It's the devs I blame here.
C
Chessack wrote:
The bottom line, from a pure logic standpoint, is that you cannot give a class healing ability, and pretty much ONLY healing ability, and then say, "They're not healers." Yeah, they are, by definition. Now, maybe after 2 years the devs want to say, "Well, OK, they were healers but it didn't work, so now we're making them buffers." I find THAT a lot easier to believe then "Oh we never intended you to heal anyway, even though 3 of 6 required branches in your base + elite profession are HEALING branches." Again... come on.... saying "you weren't supposed to be healers from the get go" is not credible.
Chessack wrote:
JediMasterKai wrote:
I had 598 the other night. But, I also PvP regularly and PvE with friends, so maybe I do more than just standing in Theed to receive it.
That's really condescending.
Many of us have combat alts. As I said in my last post... I have a combat alt who is pure combat (TKA/CH until last week, now TKA/sword). I hunt solo much of the time. I do not PVP, and I am sure that has something to do with it, but PVE, alone, I get little BF, and grouped, we kill things so fast I get even less.
Note, however, that I use the clone terminals. I haven't had an "uncloned" death in probably a year and a half. I'm sure if I forgot to clone my BF would be up there.
C
Aye it really is, I am a Dancer/Pistoler, I get my fair shair of wacks, I don't PvP simply because of my CL beiong only 54 now... The only way I get BF now is from cloneing. 100 each time I had 400ish the other day from quciktrips back from the village.
I have said that I though BF should be incured from every Incap(50) and Death(100) No matter where one clones...The Idea of "Battel Fatigue" is not a bad one.. I think that it really should have affected more... but realy what I think matters little... The devs RARELY if ever change their minds about anything bassed on what we say here on the forums
JediMasterKai wrote:
Esharra wrote:
Let's see..the past week I've run countless lvl 82 faction missions, 4 dark jedi missions, done some general cross-country NS killing and been on two base raids with my MBH/MRifle char and have accumulated 22 BF.
Perhaps you should try actually going into melee combat then to take damage.Message Edited by JediMasterKai on 06-27-2005 11:00 AM
Please.
MTKA/MCH here. I melee all the time. Since the CU nerfed my pets, I basically tank for my pets (or did, until I gave up and dropped CH last week). As a TKA/swordsman I spent 2 hours tanking for some guild mates last night as we did some mission grinding. 5 people, 10 missions, all vs. level 80+. Most lairs had 6+ spawns a shot x 3 spawn sets (initial, first hit, and halfway point), or 18 x 10 = 180 level 80+ enemies (mostly creatures, though we did do some corsec traitors who were near our missions and aggroed on us, also yellows). At the end of that two hours I had a grand totoal of... 3 BF.
If you get incapped and DBed a lot, you'd get some BF, especially if you don't remember to clone. I always clone and I rarely get DBed because I rarely get incapped. This is because I know what I am doing.
How you play vs. how I play is really beside the point though, my uberleet friend. PVP does not matter; how you PVE vs. how I do doesn't matter. To see if there is a difference you have to hold all variables constant save one. How do you do that?
You look at how the SAME person's BF is doing if the person plays the game the same way before and after the CU. Looking at my M.O.:
Take a pair of missions, do it, come back, take another pair, do that. That's four missions in whatever period of time it takes (I dunno, 45 minutes maybe?). I always take missions vs. creatures, rather than NPCs, because my character is a scout and I like to harvest (also, when you could get good creatures off of a good lair, I would tame stuff if babies sprouted). Then, as now, a creature lair always spawned 2+2+2. Leaving aside possible baby spawns, that means a 4-lair set of missions is 24 critters. This is the same pre-CU, and now. In both cases the missions have been "scaled" by the game to my difficulty level. In both cases I was a master TKA/Master CH. In both cases I used pets to assist me. In both cases I worked the lair the same way -- that is, single pulling if necessary, otherwise going right in with the pets (possible since the CU only with a female narg trio, but I have one of those).
Thus, ALL VARIABLES are held equal (as much as possible) pre- and post-CU. It takes the same time, I'm pulling the same sorts of missions, I have the same prof masteries, and so on. Everything is the same... and yet pre-CU after a run like that I'd have ended up with 50 or 60 BF, and post-CU I have maybe, MAYBE, 5 or 6. There's been a 10-fold decrease in the amount of BF I get for doing the same thing since the CU as before.
Now, maybe YOU get more BF than I do because you engage in more dangerous activity. Bully for you. But that doesn't mean that BF for a GIVEN activity is the same as always ... it just means that one activity gives more BF than another. Well, that's always been true. It was always true that if you didn't properly clone you got 100 BF upon death. That's still true. But that's a different activity (dying) than what I do (not dying, usually).
C
JediMasterKai wrote:
Figures. I expect people to read something that does not have the words 'cookie' or 'hawtpants' in it and get a valid reply. Good job, boys and girls.
If you wanted a "valid" reply to the substance of your posts, well, perhaps you should've seen to it that the substance of your posts did not include insults of our correspondent, and insinuations that people posting here just don't understand combat. Lots of us have combat alts and we understand combat perfectly well... and if everyone BUT you is saying they are getting less BF now than before, I think that tells me all I need to know.
You want people to treat your posts as something with content and you as a grown up, ACT LIKE IT. Don't flame people and then pretend to be all shocked by the flames you get in response.
...
Speaking of flames, Eshie this thread should probably be locked at this point.
C
Chessack wrote:
That's really condescending.
JediMasterKai wrote:
I had 598 the other night. But, I also PvP regularly and PvE with friends, so maybe I do more than just standing in Theed to receive it.
Nearly everything coming from his/her keyboard is condescending. 
I continue to see Inspirations described as "pre-game" constructs that force players to visit an entertainer before launching into "their" game. These Inspirations aren't nearly the same as the pre-CU mind buffs. As they're now completely unnecessary, but still helpful, they've become a part of "their" game, and not a precursory attachment to it, acting not as a gate, but instead as a catalyst. It enhances their gameplay.They can still achieve the same goals without the Inspirations, but it will take longer. They can still defeat the same enemies without the Inspirations, but they may not be rewarded the same level of xp. An absence of an Inspiration doesn't really inhibit the player, especially now that they persist from one play session to another.
Battle Fatigue, however, disrupts gameplay. Wounds were meant to play that role in most games. Entertainers weren't meant to be Healers in this game. It's been stated again and again by correspondent after correspondent that the developers DO NOT view entertainers (or performers) as healers. This game belongs to the developers, and the developers have defined our role as one of a social nature. There's nothing you can do to change that. Devs don't read petitions. Battle Fatigue, as ineffective as it is now, will be completely removed. Why argue against it? We asked for well over a year for a statement from the developers that would give us definition. THEY'VE GIVEN IT TO US. This is the part where we present ideas that will foster that positive image of entertainers, and enhance our gameplay as defined by the devs. Be thankful for the new draw (Inspirations) and move on! Sell your product to the best of your ability, and continue to look for ways to enhance the gameplay of not only yourselves, but of combatants and crafters as well. We're a social profession, after all. Our focus should be relatively communal, not self-serving.
A typical fight is not a duel to the end and does not take 20 minutes...
It may be true as yourself, but this only happens on rare occasions by very few players.
Very wellstated, thank you. /salute
JediMasterKai wrote:
I just wanted to add that I dueled another Jedi in Theed just now for about 20 minutes or so (that's actually not as long as I'm used to) and I ended up after the fight with 158 BF. Granted, I think I had about 40 or so going in from before, but that's still quite a bit. PvP seems to generate more than PvE does but it's still a lot. Anyway, I don't know why that doesn't compare with the findings thatothers haveposted but I can say for me at least, I had to visit an Entertainer after (actually have not yet, I logged because I was tired). So there is still a use for it...and blowing up in space, dying(if it does anymore), etc still generate it as well so there are other various outlets for it in the game. For someone who posted above that if you get BF beacuse you did not clone then you aren't thinking or whatever it was exactly...that's not really always the case. Sometimes I get asked to come help a friend or two who are in trouble, and you really don't have time to go clone before you help them. You load in, hope you don't die when you finally finish loading and go at it. So if there is BF upon death still (not going to check atm) then that is still a valid penalty for it and therefore means BF has yet another source to come from. If thereisn'tBF upon death, there should be. And quite a bit.
I would like to see BF stay because it was another way for Entertainers to be useful in the game. Just taking it away seems kind of silly to me since there is no logic in weakening the already difficult social interaction which is core to the profession. At least with BF, you might nudge someone into a cantina and get them to talk who might have not otherwise gone in there. Without BF, 'real' buffs, etc, there isn't much of an incentive for a player to walk into a cantina now days. Sure, a few, myself included, don't mind going to events to see someone perform, but let's be realistic. After the CU, most of the game is revolved around combat...most people are into combat and have no desire to go into a cantina to be entertained...they just don't feel that way, and that's understandable. The way around this is to use things like buffs and BF to, as I said, 'nudge' people into the cantina and THEN let the social interaction happen on its own. Maybe the guy who just got done raiding a base and needs BF and new buffs won't mind hearing a 'hi, how are you today?' from an entertainer.But without the nudge to go in there, it will never happen. You're not forcing it, as the developer who wrote that post a while back stated...you are encouraging it. I think that's a big distinction to make. At least give Entertainers that ability to potentially be useful in the game and interact.
There. A non-mean post without any flaming or insults
JediMasterKai wrote:
I just wanted to add that I dueled another Jedi in Theed just now for about 20 minutes or so (that's actually not as long as I'm used to) and I ended up after the fight with 158 BF. Granted, I think I had about 40 or so going in from before, but that's still quite a bit. PvP seems to generate more than PvE does but it's still a lot. Anyway, I don't know why that doesn't compare with the findings thatothers haveposted but I can say for me at least, I had to visit an Entertainer after (actually have not yet, I logged because I was tired). So there is still a use for it...and blowing up in space, dying(if it does anymore), etc still generate it as well so there are other various outlets for it in the game. For someone who posted above that if you get BF beacuse you did not clone then you aren't thinking or whatever it was exactly...that's not really always the case. Sometimes I get asked to come help a friend or two who are in trouble, and you really don't have time to go clone before you help them. You load in, hope you don't die when you finally finish loading and go at it. So if there is BF upon death still (not going to check atm) then that is still a valid penalty for it and therefore means BF has yet another source to come from. If thereisn'tBF upon death, there should be. And quite a bit.
I would like to see BF stay because it was another way for Entertainers to be useful in the game. Just taking it away seems kind of silly to me since there is no logic in weakening the already difficult social interaction which is core to the profession. At least with BF, you might nudge someone into a cantina and get them to talk who might have not otherwise gone in there. Without BF, 'real' buffs, etc, there isn't much of an incentive for a player to walk into a cantina now days. Sure, a few, myself included, don't mind going to events to see someone perform, but let's be realistic. After the CU, most of the game is revolved around combat...most people are into combat and have no desire to go into a cantina to be entertained...they just don't feel that way, and that's understandable. The way around this is to use things like buffs and BF to, as I said, 'nudge' people into the cantina and THEN let the social interaction happen on its own. Maybe the guy who just got done raiding a base and needs BF and new buffs won't mind hearing a 'hi, how are you today?' from an entertainer.But without the nudge to go in there, it will never happen. You're not forcing it, as the developer who wrote that post a while back stated...you are encouraging it. I think that's a big distinction to make. At least give Entertainers that ability to potentially be useful in the game and interact.
There. A non-mean post without any flaming or insults
Shaizann wrote:
Second, are you trying to say that melee combat results in more BF than ranged combat? I think you're saying that, but I'm not sure you've explicitly stated it.
As for the BF removal, well, I'll see how it pans out. I could see it go the way you suggest and I could also see it got well for us. Time will tell, and the removal is coming so we'll see.
Message Edited by Tammylynn on 06-28-2005 05:58 AM
Tammylynn wrote:
Now if battle fatigue is removed I would not even have bothered stoping to take a break I would have continued and caped pistols also.
To be honest, without it there is no point for my combat player to visit a cantina. If that is what everyone wishes then ok.
Message Edited by Tammylynn on 06-28-200505:58 AM
I don’t think that’s what everyone wishes for. I get the impression some do, but I am not one of them. If my characters ends up having absolutely no impact on game as a whole and absolutely no real purpose then I don’t see myself paying fee for glorified chatroom. If I want to discus the cool nail polish I found on my last trip to the mall I don’t feel I need to log in to the game for it, all I have to do is pick up phone and call rl friend. Basically I’m waiting to see where it all will lead. Will I wait forever? Nope, my patience may be wearing thin but there is still some left. As usual Devs are silent about the overall goal, using their usual Gestapo tactics of “don’t ask questions, you are on need to know basics, just keep on paying and feel privileged we let you pay to test our Beta”. Communication is a wonderful thing and it’s so sadhow totally locking it is here.
Rabenschwinge wrote:
JediMasterKai:
A typical fight is not a duel to the end and does not take 20 minutes...
It may be true as yourself, but this only happens on rare occasions by very few players.
That's not true at all actually. A duel would provide me LESS battle fatigue than against more players. A lot of PvP on servers now comes down to Jedi vs Jedi in the front lines duking it out with ranged in the back and doctors/CMs somewhere in between. This means that the Jedi tend to typically take the brunt of your damage. At any one time in my PvP day, I may have 3 or more people pounding on me...that is not unusual at all. I'm generally always Special Forces because I grew up as a 4/4/4/4 Guardian on the server and living the life of perma death with saber TEF and also perm overt status after Publish 9 just put me into that frame of mind...many other Jedi play the same way.
I'm not sure how PvP is on your home server, but on Ahazi, PvP can last a lot longer than 20 minutes. Base raids can go on for hours seeing as how cloners are generally available right next to the base, and for opposing factions, you can usually find a nearby city to clone into then ride back in. Those fights can take anywhere from 1-5 hours, Ikid you not. True, they do not happen every single hour of every single day, but they happen enough. Also, when one side gets wind that the other is mounting forces somewhere, whether it be Theed, Bestine or a player city, the other side usually starts to gather forces and makes a move. All of these fights I see always take time...people enjoy PvP so even after dying, they will re-group and go declare again and go at it; that's just how it is. Also, there are enough Jedi like myself who prefer to run around solo looking for trouble 
When you find another Jedi, fights almost always take 30-40 minutes if both players are smart...less if one is not as wise, but still at least 15 minutes. This is how the FRS should be, and I have a feeling eventually that there will be more Jedi vs. Jedi interaction rather than calling 5 friends to go take out one Jedi just so your whole group can split the FRS points.
Lastly, lots of players duel for fun. It's a part of the game. If the developers didn't expect people to want to do this, they never would have added /duel in the first place. Sometimes it's a good test of skill to see how your template works, othertimes it's solely just for fun. Nevertheless, it's there. All of these things combined tell me that there are still plenty of ways to get Battle Fatigue.