Dancer Archive
Thread: Future of the Dancer Profession? Your thoughts..
I was just wondering what everyone thinks about the future of the dance profession?
I personally have been discouraged and my mind is questionable to if I should actually keep it. I have been a master dancer for a month and I really like what I do but there are a few things that are getting to me and bothering me.
1. AFK dancers/holo grinders
2. spices and food that have the same abilities to buff the mind pools
3. people migrating stats all to mind and just using doctor buffs
4. time it takes to buff the mind
Now I'm not whinning, it's just these few things concern me and make me feel useless. What is my role in this universe? Do we really need dancers?
Roleplaying a dancer is all fine and dandy but I can't even do that being as the cantinas are packed with afk holo dancers and healers. Going to a remote city is out of the question, how are you suppose to roleplay when 1 person comes every 45 minutes.
This has just being getting to me lately.... what are your thoughts...
I forgot about these:
5. you can not buff yourself
6. can not heal bf in camps
I can go through each one in detail if needed but I'm pretty sure you all have an idea of what I'm talking about
I'm sorry that's so negative, but to my mind, barring drastic measures, it's already too late. There's too few of us and a growing percentage of us is now the "new type of entertainer", i.e., not socializers but something else. This dev team either does not understand socializers at all, or they lack the type of courage that molded EQ into a game that was a success...the ability to go against public opinion and make decisions for the good of the game.
Many here will not agree with me, and that is fine for this is only my opinion. Why am I still a dancer? I ask myself that a lot, and the truth is, I'm hanging onto a thread of hope that eventually someone over there on the dev team will wake up, see what the entertainer professions have become, and say "Wow, that is SO not what we wanted when we envisioned entertainers...can this be fixed?".
- J
Yes understand that our buff lasts 2 hours if done right. It's always lasts that long when I buff for 8 minutes BUT! Even when I offer a free mind buff to the group I'm goingto hunt with they, just don't care. They rather the easy way/faster way and take some spice and food.
So again, I am not needed.
Then there are those who migrate all there stats to mind and just get doctors to buff the other ham bars.
So again I am not needed.
There are a few that have patience and don't mind waiting for 8 minutes for a 2 hour lasting buff. I have moved from planet to planet, from location to location, still finding few that would want our buffs.
Maybe if I don't need to buff for 8 minutes and only 4 then things might change. (If you can buff people in less time and have the buff last2hours then please post the method)
I must agree with Pickless here, I see the future for us live dancers as dim. Our wishes regarding AFKers havebeen totally neglected and to me it seems that maybe I was wrong. Maybe this is what the Devs wanted it to be like? Why else do they leave it like it is? I loved dancing and entertaining, all my chars skills are in the entertainer tree, but that will cahnge now. I am keeping dancer, I guess I am hanging on to the same thread of hope that something might actually be done about it.
But to be honest I think we will continue to be pushed out further and further by the AFKers, I started a char at Chimarea and thats ALL AFKers, that is our future...
Everyone has an opinion. No one has to agree but opinions put I nice twist to your own thoughts and make you think.
I personally I agree withPickleSW. Although negative, his statements are truthfull.
Thanks to everyone that has posted, maybe we can get a few more thoughts from other people in our profession.Sopost your thoughts ladies and gentlemen.
Nynna wrote:I must agree with Pickless here, I see the future for us live dancers as dim. Our wishes regarding AFKers havebeen totally neglected and to me it seems that maybe I was wrong. Maybe this is what the Devs wanted it to be like? Why else do they leave it like it is?
That is an extremely good question, Nynna.
However, I don't think the developers really wanted it to be like this. I think what happened is, they didn't want to make the tough calls, the ones that would've helped the entertainment professions and the game in the long run, but would've temporarily caused a firestorm of flaming and anger and vitriol from the combat-heavy player base. They lack the courage to do what is needed, and the foresight to see that failing to do what is needed, is going to hurt the game (and their sales/subscription rate) far worse than the "tough love" that has been needed for some time.
Somebody way up in the hierarchy, perhaps several somebodies, either doesn't really understand roleplaying game theory or doesn't care whether the game does things that fly in the face of every good GM/DM's experiences or not.
But every good DM/GM had to learn the hard way what to do and what not to do, and maybe that's what these guys are going to have to do too. The sad part is that, whether it's the DM or the developers, it's the good players who have to sit there and weather the "learning process" until the person running things wises up.
I've got no plans to ever give up dancer or entertainer. I will continue to play my main character as those things, in addition to whatever else I may do with the spare skill points. But for the first time in 6 months (since I started playing) I am slowly starting to eye games like City of Heroes and idly wonder what the release date will be. That tells you something. A few months ago, I couldn't care less about any other games.... now I am starting to pay attention.
On the other hand, until another game comes along that has built-in rewards for socializers on the scale of SWG, I'm probably not going anywhere. And so far I have yet to see any game besides SWG even come close.
The problem is and always will be that the socializer types constitute a tiny percentage of the game audience. MOST of the people who pay for these MMORPGs are still (sadly) arcade gamers first and foremost (if not only). When you boil it all down to its essence, most of the players want an arcade game. Period. So that is what SOE is slowly finding itself forced to provide, even if they don't want to. And so will all MMORPG makers who want to make money and have a wide audience. The Socilization/RP crowd is just not big enough to sustain a MMORPG. It's oddly surprising, since after all there used to be a huge MUSH/MUX audience out there, larger than that of any single MMORPG. Why all those people refuse to "come over" and try out MMORPGs I am not sure, but perhaps these very shenanigans we have been seeing in SWG (changing it every month to cater more and more to the arcade style of play) is a good start on why that is.
C
By making Dancers and Musiciansan entirely social profession, with fewbenefits in the field and too many restrictions on the current abilities, they have cut down tremendously on the number of people who will play the profession, and decimated the ranks of those who might keep it. The number of skill points needed to become a dancer just aren't cost effective for the class.
For the most part, the only place Entertainers thrive are in the player cities that are full of dedicated roleplayers. Even there they are rarely found.
The dancer does have useful skills. The mind buff and mind healing are highly beneficial, and I am often asked to heal or buff when I am in town. However, these two things do not in any way benefit my own character, except when I have suffered mind wounds or battle fatigue and must heal them. Then it's five minutes in the cantina and I'm back out again. I can't heal battle fatigue in the field, so I'm forced into a cantina. Anyone in the cantina can benefit also from my presence there, of course, but they don't want to be there any more than I do.
AFKing is so prevalent because dancing is boring. Bottom line. I enjoy most of the different dances, but after seeing the same repetitions over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again...it's boring. There are things that liven up the profession, such as group dancing and such, but again, after so many repetitions of the same thing, it gets old.
People argue that killing things gets old after a while too. And it certainly does, no doubt about that. The difference is that you can go to different worlds, fight different things, use tactics, different specials, PvP, find better weapons, search for hidden POIs, etc. As a dancer, you are stuck mindless hitting F1 thru F8 (and that's only for a few dances) and chatting. If there's no one to chat with, there's even less incentive. All the cantinas look the same (except the "high end planet" cantinas, and those are full of furniture). The flourishes add nothing new, there's no strategy involved.
There is no content for Entertainers. No content means no point in playing one. This is what hurts the Entertainment classes, not AFKing.
This is what I mean by the profession is being killed by other players. People are all messed up. Rather than finding a profession they'll enjoy, they insist on going AFK in some screwed up belief that not playing the game will somehow make this profession more enjoyable for them, and in the process they destroy it for the people who do enjoy it as it was intended to be played.
How can a developer possibly predict this sort of illogical behavior in time to prevent it? And now it's too late to do anything about it without drastic measures.
That's why the future is bleak. It's a trap, and we're firmly caught in it.
- J
NotYourAvgEwok wrote:
People argue that killing things gets old after a while too. And it certainly does, no doubt about that. The difference is that you can go to different worlds, fight different things, use tactics, different specials, PvP, find better weapons, search for hidden POIs, etc. As a dancer, you are stuck mindless hitting F1 thru F8 (and that's only for a few dances) and chatting. If there's no one to chat with, there's even less incentive. All the cantinas look the same (except the "high end planet" cantinas, and those are full of furniture). The flourishes add nothing new, there's no strategy involved.
Okay you've explained why you find being a dancer boring and a figher interesting. Great, go fight and let us entertain. That's what we enjoy.
Now I'll turn your paragraph around and rephrase it from my prospective.
People argue that entertaining gets old after a while too. And it certainly does, no doubt about that. The difference is that you can go to different worlds, do different dances, use coordinated routines, different effects, hold dancing competitions, find better routines, search for new places to perform, etc. As a fighter, you are stuck mindlessly killing the same things (and that's only for a few weapons) and searching for something that would actually present a challenge and might require new tactics. (Face it, most fights are send the pet in, start attacking, special special, heal a few times, and it's dead). The weapons add nothing new, theres no creativity involved.
See how you can make anything out to sound boring if you don't have the heart to find the fun in it? Well guess what, I don't go out and fight much. And at least a newbie entertainer in the group won't get people killed when they attack the lair and everything comes out at once.