Creature Handler Archive
Thread: upcoming changes
Esharra wrote:
I'll slide a write-up into TH's hand and whisper "Friday Feature" in his ear.
How about instead of reading about the 50 foot spider on Dathomir every time I load in we get to read about the new inspirations for a few days? They've done it for speeders, mutant spiders, Wookiee Life Day... etc... I'd like to see an entertainer specific one that sings the praises of the new inspirations. That way even players who don't visit the website and who don't pay any attention to that tiny line on the log in page that says "Friday Feature" will see information about it.
Also, I didn't assume the BF removal was being rushed because of us. I'm mostly wondering if they'd consider holding off simply because it does affect us in such a big way. We've taken in on the chinfor a while nowand although we may be in the minority it sure would be nice to get a break.
Chessack wrote:
What I do have a problem with is being told, "You were never intended to be healers from day 1 of the design."
Esharra wrote:
I think it would be a lot more productive of us if we stopped pouring our energy into trying to hold back the river and started applying ourselves into thinking of things to ask for that would bring in more entertainers. Devs apply content where players are spending their time.
And given the effort it takes to code and maintain the programming that makes perfect sense. The problem has been that up until now it was really hard to ask for things because there was a fundamental difference of opinion over the role of entertainers. Were we "socializers"? Were we "healers"? "Were we "buffers" Were we some unknown combination? When you aren't certain where your player fits in the grand scheme of things it'sdifficult to really push for anything other than fairly superficial modifications. Even for changes that nearly all entertainer playstyles can agree upon, getting a solution that works and that can be worked into the coding without causing a near riot with other professions can be impossible (thus the continuation of afktainers). So let's consider the new player sitting there with the game installed deciding what profession they want to pursue. If they are considering being an entertainer for some reason other than choreography or "the frilly things" what incentive do they currently have? Sure I can try to reassure the new dancer or musician next to me in the cantina that more stuff is coming but if they have more stuff now in some other profession then why would they stick with being an entertainer? Doing so will prevent them from fullyexploring the rest of the Galaxy, will prevent them from fully participating in the game economy, and gives them not a whole lot of reward in general. So sure I can offer a whole slew of things that I'd like to see and that I think would increase the popularity of the entertainer profession but in order to actually increase the number of entertainers we need to be able to offer them something when they install the game and first enter the cantina. We've got a perfect Catch-22 situation. We need new content to get more entertainers so that the devs feel the time investment is worth while but we need more entertainers to get that content. DOH!
How about if we basedthe statson the number of people who mastered the entertainer professions rather than the number of people who currentlyare entertainers. I see a lot of glow sticks in the hands of former dancers and musicians. /smirk
well, for one thing, I do hope they remove the NEED for entertainment healing XP when they remove BF....would be a deathblow to our profession if mastering it requires a form of XP which no longer can be gained....
can't wait to see what new stuff they have in mind....will they post some soon in the development boards?
Panthu wrote:
If you aren't happy about them trying to help, things get shelved. They move on to another area of the game where players are less opposing. It's just a question of time. Why waste time where it's not going to be appreciated?
As always the problem is with how the devs go about things, Panth. In brief, their M.O. for rolling out big changes stinks.
These guys are not stupid. They are experienced game designers. They have to know, without the slightest doubt, that any major change the work into the game, for any prof, is going to generate complaints and resistance. This is especially true when the players do not understand the reasons behind the changes because the dev team is not willing to communicate. They work in secret for months and then unveil a massive change on a prof (not just dancers -- look at ANY major revamp they have done) and say, "Ta-da!" and are surprised that people who are attached to a 2-year-old system get upset? Come now... if such things surprise them they need to go back and take Sociology 101... or maybe just Common Sense 101.
Either the devs are unable to see more than one step ahead to determine the logical consequences of their decisions, or they just don't care. What other explanation is there, besides a lack of either caring or common sense? I mean come on, look at so many of the changes with/since the CU...
They took pet specials away... and were shocked the CHs were upset.
They took all the cool TKA animations away... and were shocked the TKA players were upset.
They made it so basically EVERY pre-CU item having to do with combat (from stims to guns to armor) converted to completely unsuable crap... and then were shocked that people who had in some cases spent millions of credits on these things were ticked.
And so now... they are taking BF away... and they are suprised people might be rather upset? What goes on in their heads, I'd like to know?
Notice, I am not personally arguing against taking BF away. I'd rather get rid of it. Healing XP is an albatross around the entertainers' necks -- it has been ever since the server populations went down and hurt players became scarce. I'd like to see it go away. BUT... even though I agree with the change, I have enough common sense to understand that players who have, for obvious reasons, thought of themselves as "healers" for two years, might be just a tiny bit irritated, just a little, at finding out their healing is being taken completely out of the game. And I think that given this oh-so-obvious point, the devs would've been wise to come on here and really have a useful discussion with us (or at the VERY least a useful one with our poor correspondent), rather than just pulling the old "stone tablets from the flaming mountain" routine yet again, as they keep doing every time they roll out a major change.
C
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 
Panthu wrote:
I've always wished they would post in here instead of just lurking too. Maybe if we all act sweet and promise not to bite they'll come out. *wonders if cookies will work as Dev bait*
mmm, only if the cookies are digital ones, I guess.....and virus-free of course....
Panthu wrote:
I've always wished they would post in here instead of just lurking too. Maybe if we all act sweet and promise not to bite they'll come out. *wonders if cookies will work as Dev bait*
Agreed. We need to not flame them.
I think things would be soooo much better if they could start a dialog with their players instead of hiding from us, though.
I know, they're nervous. Maybe scared. "If we post they will eat us alive." That's what happens when you go for like a year and a half with NO posts on the forums....
They need to take a page from Cryptic's book. Statesman (the lead dev) and a couple of the other devs will get on those forums and just have brainstorming threads... They let the players know what ideas are rambling around in their heads, and float those ideas to see what people think. They get tons of good feedback and what's more -- they have a GREAT relationship with the player base.
I have to believe that if the devs tried that here, eventually the same thing would happen. Now, yes, I agree they would have to steel themselves for some flaming in the short term, but if they could weather it, after the flamers got it out of their system (which won't take long -- flamers rarely have anything of substance to say) we could have an actual dialog that would lead to VAST improvements in the community.
C
For a long, long time, I have been operating under the assumption that the developers wanted to make this a "played profession," and the envisioned these professions as actively played pursuits from real players actively engaging in the game world.
But now, I am not so sure.
The post by Esharra I think says a lot about who we are dealing with on the development staff. We are not dealing with the same developers from launch. We are dealing with a bunch of "young turks" who have been handed this project, and wish to shape it to their vision, rather than that of the founders (Holocron, Q3P0, Runesaber, etc.).
When Esharra said that development and content is being geared toward sheer numbers of subscribers, I have to imagine that we are fighting an uphill battle. Because the majority of entertainers today do most of their entertaining AFK, and there are large numbers of individuals who would rather have these professions be just as viable via macro as when played.
But I think these developers are going one step further.
I think these developers are trying to erase the distinction once and for all between AFK and live.
I imagine the concept they have of who will be possessing entertainer accountsare basically guild heads, multi-account subscribers, or perhaps mayors or merchants.
I have no evidence that these current developers envision these professions to be playable in their own right, because after all, they have seen numerous examples, posts, and effort placed in making these professions automated service providers.
And from what I see, the developers are intent on expanding this concept, to take out many of the problems or hassles with automated service providing, so that even more individuals would be persuaded to create entertainment characters, on top of the other accounts they already possess and run.
We have been operating under the assumption that these developers think that the game has more to gain by making these professions playable and non-automated. But we have never stopped to consider that perhaps they feel the game has more to gain by making automated entertainment even more of a playstyle option.
I am starting to believe these developers are intent on promoting these classes as a reason for a player to create another account. Perhaps they calculate that the entertainment classes provide the perfect reason to become a multi-account subscriber, based on the model of parking an entertainer in a cantina at whatever hours they choose, drawing a handsome income by buffing various things via /covercharge, and letting the macro system and the in game tools do all the work in lieu of play, while the player is off doing other things on their main character.
Buffbots before the CU had two, very problematic aspects to their routine. First, they did not have many tools to enforce payment. However, with the creation of /covercharge, bots have all the tools they need to set a price and step away.
The second problem with buffbots is that they are boring. And when players have to be in their proximity for an extended period of time, they start to think of the whole excercise as pointless. But boredom really is only an issue if the things that they do take time. Our current buffs take very little time, much less than the time before the CU.
However, battle fatigue does take time, and it is time that live entertainers have been able to use to great effect in overcoming this second buffbot deficiency of boredom. We can occupy a patron's time and mitigate the effects of long waits. That is why I call BF healing a "live entertainer's game," in that live players can work with a time element to greater effect.
But with unattendees, long waits to clear out one's BF only creates animosity, resentment, and anger. And that is because there is nothing really to do but watch the preprogrammed flourishes and spam. Indeed, healing BF from a bot is a nightmare of apathy and boredom, and rather than suck it up and bear it, players who use buffbots for BF healing are more likely to complain than to think of theautomated serviceas a valued playstyle and business model.
They are taking out BF and putting in /covercharge not to benefit the live game. They are doing these things to make botting less problematic, more hassle free, and even more "hands off," by providing system tools and a redefinition of the roles that are suited to their "special considerations." And it is because, I suspect, these current developers are starting to actually think that unattended service is worth promoting as a facilitated game feature in these classes.
That being said, I do believe that these developers envision entertainer characters as being played characters, but only at events, parties, etc. And I do believe that they envision the players taking control of the entertainer to do the events, with props, costumes, etc, only to go back to unattend after the event is over.
Message Edited by PoetDancer on 06-28-2005 10:22 PM
PoetDancer wrote:
That being said, I do believe that these developers envision entertainer characters as being played characters, but only at events, parties, etc. And I do believe that they envision the players taking control of the entertainer to do the events, with props, costumes, etc, only to go back to unattend after the event is over.
I personally hate the "ent as alt" mindset. Some devs have had it, others haven't. I strongly feel like first consideration on any Entertainer addition should be first and foremost for players who are playing an Entertainer as there one and only char - then players who play an Ent as their main, but have alts to support their Ent char on that server - then players who have an Entertainer on a server other than their main, but only log right into the cantina and right back out (like my Bria Panthu, she only goes to parties).
All are valid ways to play an Entertainer, but there is a natural priority order that should be there just out of pure need.
Anyway, this is one of the reasons I am open to a separate skill point pool for Entertainer profs. If everyone can be an Ent on their main, there is no reason to AFK bot at all. If you are doing it full time on your main like most of us do, no change. If you are doing it currently with combat or crafting alts to support your Ent, well now you don't have to do that from another char. If you only play an Ent as an off char on another server and you have no need to do any more than you have been, no change for you.
No wherein this setupis therea motivation to bot. People who "need" Ent services can carry them around with them. People who want Entparticipation for parties can haveit whenever a party pops up. People who wantaltsfor RP will still have all the same motivations - which were never to bot.
DanceRulez wrote:
While I tried to make my opinions on these upcoming changes clear in the dev responded thread on the Entertainer forum, I think I should reiterate those ideas here as I don't feel that others have made quite the same arguments.
I think the removal of BF is a mistake. Why? The main reason is because I think that the entertainer/combatant interaction has always worked best when it has taken place during combat downtime. When this game first started there were only mind wounds and BF that we could heal. People would come in to a cantina after an intense play session to get healed up, and they would often stick around a while because they were taking a break or didn't have anywhere to rush off to right away or were looking for a group. Although there was the occasional person who would complain about "having to go see an entertainer", most people seemed to have no complaints, and often enjoyed the atmosphere of a lively cantina environment with active entertainers and other types of players milling around. People would often even be appreciative to walk in to an out-of-the-way cantina and find even a lone entertainer there to keep them company for a bit while easing their mind. Again, what worked about this arrangement was the fact that it was during downtime when the combat players didn't have something to do right away or were taking a little break from the action. The BF and mind wounds gave them a reason to seek out the cantinas, and this allowed Entertainers to entertain and socialize and add life to the game.
The problem with buffs - at least in the way that they have existed in this game so far, is that they are administered during combat prep time. There is simply a different mindset at work at this time. The combat player will seek one out when they've already figured out something they want to do, and their goal at this point is to take care of whatever prep work they need as quickly as possible and get on to the 'fun' (or the 'grind'). The person who might be seeking a buff at this time probably doesn't care how good a show we can put on, and they're not likely to stay and chat any longer than they need to. Maybe they need to go find some group members, or maybe they're already part of a group that's waiting on them. Once the buff is applied, it's even telling them to hurry up and get to what they want to do because the timer's started and it's ticking away. This is antithetical to the type of gameplay that many of us, as entertainers, want. We don't want a "wham, bam, thank you ma'am" game play, we want an environment where people can come in during a lull in the action, stick around for a little while or a long while, and kick back and relax in a fun atmosphere. While preparation type buffs can still be a part of our gameplay, I would say that our backbone has been and should continue to be the downtime period.
Now some might say that BF is an artificial construct. I would argue that there's nothing "artificial" about it at all. It's a very real issue that even today's military takes seriously. The USO is an important military support organization and one of its primary functions is maintaining troop morale. In our daily lives how many of us can continue working at our day-to-day job for hours on end without taking an occasional break or going home at the end of the day to watch a little TV, read a book, or play a video game. That's all the BF is really trying to model, and it's doing so in a very simple way - the more you fight, the more BF you accrue, and at some point your character needs to take a little break to clear their mind and get rid of the BF. Sure maybe other online games don't model that, but they all have downtimes in some form or another. Some games even do model BF in some form or another - usually making it so that you can't continue to push military pieces nonstop without losing your battle effectiveness, rotating them with fresher units, taking a break for a while, or even contructing entertainment venues to keep your people's minds off the combat.
As far as BF being considered "forced downtime", well it is, but all games of this type have varying sorts of forced downtime. It's a healthy thing. It keeps people from running through content too fast or from getting bored from too much non-stop combat. It forces players to make strategic choices instead of running through the game in "god mode". Now I'm no fan of excessive forced downtime. I think many players were rightly upset about all the hoops you used to have to jump through to get anything going: standing in line for doctor buffs, finding a musician and a dancer for mind buffs, waiting as long as 10 minutes for one shuttle hop and possibly having to make 2 or 3 stops and then possibly having to ride our in the wilderness another 10 minutes or so to get where you want to be. But much of that has been streamlined now which I think is generally a good thing. There's no reason that BF should be considered excessive in terms of downtime. With a proper accrual rate, it should build up only gradually. The successful players should be the ones who realize that when you have a break in the action, or at the beginning or end of a session you take a break at a cantina and get your BF taken care of, and it need never even be considered an inconvenience. The unsuccessful players will be the ones who think they can keep going in nonstop combat for days on end, and then gripe that they're maxed out on BF all the time or gripe that they *have* to go find an entertainer or gripe about forced interaction. Which of those types of players are going to be happier in the long run and more likely to stay long-term players of the game? Which type should the developers spend more time catering to?
To the complaint that BF is "forced interaction", this is again true - if you insist on looking at it that way. I would point out that this is, in fact, a multi-player game - the point of which is the opportunity to interact with other players. If you want to call those interactions "forced" then maybe you're the type of person that shouldn't be playing these types of games to begin with. There are all sorts of "forced" interactions between players in the game. If you want increased XP earning opportunities or access to high end content, find a group. If you want customized armor, weapons, clothing, ships, etc., find a crafter. Want healing or rez'ing, find a doctor. Want hides, bones, or meat, find a ranger, and so on. Not too many people complain about these types of interactions, so why is it that when it comes to Entertainers, the same kind of interdependence is considered "forced interaction"?
The problem, as I see it, is not that the concept of BF is flawed or doesn't work, the problem is that it's not implemented properly (which has become more noticeable since the CU changes), and it's further exacerbated by the persistence of the AFK problem. AFK is the broken system that should be removed - not BF. BF should be fixed and enhanced and there are even combat players who agree with this. My solution would first of all be to monitor the ways and rates at which BF is accrued. For one thing I think that the BF penalty for death is too high. The health wounds received, the loss of buffs, and the time out should be penalty enough without adding a good dose of BF to it as well. If they really think they need more of a penalty, then they could add some kind of "cloning sickness" debuff that lasts for a little while. Then I think BF should be accrued gradually in battle perhaps as a function of time as well as battle injuries. The rate could even be slow overall so that on average maybe you'd gain about a 100 every hour or two.
Then the effect of BF must be modified so that it has a definite and noticeable effect on players when it reaches high enough levels. The basic effect should be that your combat effectiveness is reduced as you get high levels of BF. This could be in simple ways like reduced XP gains, or, more realistically, it could act as a kind of debuff that begins to affect skills like attack speed and accuracy and also your defensive bonuses. You could set levels so that up to a certain amount, BF has no affect, then as you get higher, you start having a low, medium, and eventually a high effect from BF. If done right, players would need to stop in a cantina for healing maybe once a play session and never even suffer any negative effects from BF.
I can even imagine some more advanced ideas such as a BF Mitigation skill which could be earned with advanced combat skill boxes which could do things like helping you earn less BF in combat or shifting the effects of BF so that it takes higher amounts before it affects you. There could be skill tapes for this that might be valuable trading commodities. You could also institute limited in-the-field BF healing. You could set it so that entertainers could heal BF in camps (and even add the same limitations to Jedi BF healing or at least Jedi BF healing of others), but it would be limited by the BF healing skill of the Entertainer, as well as the size of the camp. However it's handled, the catch is that you can never heal back to 0 BF while out in the field. The system could maintain an internal counter of, for example, the highest BF you've accrued so far, and never let it heal below some fraction of that. If you let your maximum amount keep increasing, then the level you can heal down to will keep increasing as well. The only way to get back to 0 again would be to go to a cantina, for example, and get yourself healed back to 0 at which point the internal counter could reset to 0 as well.
The other part that needs to happen is that Entertainer Healing XP needs to go away. With mind wounds gone and BF, even in an improved system, being still small, there's no reason to tie Entertainers to a separate pool of XP that we must fill up in order to advance in our professions. Instead everything that was EH XP before could simply be converted to Dance XP. This would finally free us from having part of our advancement depend on waiting around for people to come in and bring us our XP. Most other professions can simply go out and do what they do and they get all the XP they need. Dancer and Musician have always been gated by EH XP, and while in the beginning of this game, it worked reasonably well, the rise of AFK entertainers and the more recent CU changes have made EH XP obsolete and a hinderance to advancement in our profession.
These types of changes make much more sense to me and I think would improve the game overall instead of this new plan to remove BF. I would rather see them spending their development time to make the BF system work in a reasonable way rather than to remove it. It is, after all, development time either way. However if, in fact, they have their minds set on this and the removal of BF is written in stone, already coded, and in the queue for push to live, then there may be another way that we can preserve the combat downtime interactions that I think are so important. While I think that noncombat buffs are probably a good idea to give us increased interactivity with non-combat folks, I think we could preserve our interactivity with combat buffs by introducing a new type of buff to the game. We could take a page from another popular online game *cough*W*o*W*cough*, and add "timerless" buffs. The way this would work would be that the buff would wear down by use and not by time. For example, a pistoleer comes in and gets a pistol speed buff from an Entertainer. The buff would increase the Pistoleer's speed for maybe 100 shots for example. Once the buff is done, the Pistoleer could run out and use them right away, wait till later in the evening, or wait a week or more to use those 100 shots. The buff would be there ready to use whenever the Pistoleer wants to, and the Pistoleer can feel free to get the buff at any time and use it at any time. This is an improvement even over the current inspiration buff's ability to last between sessions because even if you get one before you log out, you may not know for sure what you'll be doing the next time you log in or if you'll get a chance to use it before it runs out or is too far depleted to be helpful. This also would remove the problem of buffs being only a precombat prep time event, as such buffs could be sought out and applied at any time that a combat player can see an Entertainer and used at any time that the combat player needs it without worrying about timers.
This is the message that I would like delivered to the devs. Don't take away our combat downtime services and diminish our interdependence in the game. I believe that this new course of removing BF and introducing only noncombat buffs, which is as much as I understand so far, will serve only to isolate Entertainers more and diminish not only our interdependence, but also some of the spirit and uniqueness that SWG has. If the devs really want to find out what is wrong with the Entertainer profession and fix it for the better, then they need to carry through with their promise and start with what's really wrong with the profession - removing AFK Entertainers. Until then Entertainers will never be completely happy with whatever changes they make, and no one will know for sure what is or is not working with our professions or what should and shouldn't be done until the lifeless zombies are gone and the sickening question of "What if someone AFK's it?" is finally dead and buried where it belongs once and for all.