Dancer Archive
Thread: Update: Latest Answer from TH
With the GCW revamp, all professions will be seeing new playability though the nature of that professional growth is undeveloped at this time.
Uh, I just read the two pages of replies the thread has gotten already... I thought it might be a good idea to go ahead get our comments headed in the right direction. 
The part above is our real hope for a lot of the things we are wanting. It's not a sure thing, but there is a lot of potential to get some really neat toys out of the GCW revamp. Jester, the GCW Corre has some really neat ideas about how Dancers could be included and many of them touch on one or more of our Top Issue requests. I hope we will have some good threads that the Devs and Jester can come pop into soon. This is good news. 
The Musician answer gives a lot more info into our Self Buffing requests... as you can see, it's not an immersion issue. 
I'm hoping we can all find some constructive ways to talk about this and the other things brought up in their answer.
You can leave your comments here in this thread or in the main thread... I'm glad these are out now. 
What is there to say about the Musician question? TH says:
"Musicians will not get the ability to buff their own Focus and Willpower. As the system currently exists, if players could buff themselves, they would get experience points every time they buffed themselves and that is bad design."
To which I say: "(obscene foaming at the mouth that would never make it through the profanity filter)"
Message Edited by Groovymarlin on 05-26-2004 04:57 PM
Same here, groovymarlin.
It's bad design because we get experience for it? We don't get any more experience buffing than regular dancing, or have I been totally clueless this whole time? (Well, I guess there is that 8-15 points of EH exp lol.) Besides, am I wrong or do we generally only buff once we've reached master and no longer need experience?
I'm sorry, Panthu. I love this game and tend to defend it more than most when people are being all whiny. But, to be perfectly honest with you, I can't think of anything constructive to say about this. This is the lamest excuse I have ever seen. And the sheer stupidity of it renders me speechless.
Message Edited by Drygo on 05-26-2004 02:04 PM
Indeed. And here's a few more problems with that non-answer...
1. When I dance, I heal my own battle fatigue and mind wounds. Yet somehow I do not receive entertainer healing xp while doing that. So why can't I buff myself without receiving it either?
2. As pointed out, most people are only going to buff after they reach master, when they don't need xp anymore anyway.
3. Is buffing oneself for xp any worse than setting up an obnoxious macro and gaining ALL of a profession's xp while AFK and NOT ACTUALLY PLAYING THE DANG GAME??
4. And aren't they ignoring the fact that:
- ID's get xp for ID-ing themselves
- Tailors get xp for making their own clothes
- Weaponsmiths get xp for making their own weapons
- Armorsmiths get xp for making their own armor
- Chefs get xp for making their own food
- Medics and doctors get xp for crafting their own meds
- Droid engineers get xp for making their own droids
- Architects get xp for making their own houses
- Creature handlers get xp for taming and training their own pets
- Bio-engineers get xp for making their own pets
Once again, entertainers get the shaft. Actually I feel sorry for just about every profession at this point. It's painfully obvious from the answers that all of the dev effort is now focused on JTL, and we're all screwed until that comes out and we fork over more dollars to buy it.
Well i never received XP for buffing anyone as a dancer, beside the normal dance XP from doing flourishes... And even if we would... hell the dang buffs last 2 hours and we (unlike docs) can't overbuff over already existing buffs.
Has who ever answered the question actually ever played an entertainer? I somehow doubt it...
I'm quite angry right now, almost all questions are answered with "After JTL" or "no, no way in hell ever"... for that we now had to wait 3 weeks? 
Yep... I freaked too... but, at least we know what the party line is now. Our code doesn't seem to have much in common with Doc buffing. You get some EH from buffing, it's only during the time the potency (not duration) is building. At Master, it's like 7 xp a tick.
Edit: To take my own advice and be more constructive... the GCW comment is not a blow off. I know it looks a little bit like that and coming in at the same time as the Musician answer, it's easy to miss... but, I mean it. I can't promise we will get anything cool, but this really is being talked about a lot. I don't know what is being considered and what has already been ruled out, but the ideas I have heard are very cool so far.
On the buff front, eh, I'm not getting so much. I have a feeling that the Devs don't really understand how we feel about our buffs. I'm trying to get some communication going on these. This answer on the self buffing is in line with our last Dev answer, just with more detail.
... and, the Devs are still working on current issues... TH just thinks in terms of reporting: Gameplay Request, Feature Request, Bug Report, Exploit. This is how he talks, you get used to it when you read a bunch of his stuff. Bugs and Exploits are still being worked on at the normal rate (if not more so to get everything solid and stable before all the new stuff)... Gameplay Request look like they are sharing JTL Dev time to me... Feature Requests are post JTL. It just so happens that a lot of these questions from this batch would fall into the "Feature Request" pile.
Our new Dances are still coming, so are the Hutt Casino and the new Ent Missions. I hope some more information will start being leaked out soon. The CB and GCW are huge projects that will greatly improve the game and fix many existing issues. It's not all JTL, I promise.
Message Edited by Panthu on 05-26-2004 06:22 PM
Yep, we can ask that.
Drygo wrote:
I propose that our next question is this: Since the "reason" for not letting us buff ourselves is because we can get experience from it, is it possible to make it so that only Master Dancers can buff themselves? Master Dancers (and Musicians) gain nothing from experience.
Panthu, is our new "quest" thing still planned for a Publish 9 mini (9.1? 9.2?)? And is the Hutt Casino for sure in publish 10.2?
I only ask this because the other day someone in game mentioned the Hutt Casino thing not happening until publish 12 or so. It might have been a typo. I can just see it happening so easily though, our content getting pushed to post-JTL.
I'm so pessimistic now! *slaps self* Snap out of it!
Groovymarlin wrote:
Panthu, is our new "quest" thing still planned for a Publish 9 mini (9.1? 9.2?)? And is the Hutt Casino for sure in publish 10.2?
I only ask this because the other day someone in game mentioned the Hutt Casino thing not happening until publish 12 or so. It might have been a typo. I can just see it happening so easily though, our content getting pushed to post-JTL.
I'm so pessimistic now! *slaps self* Snap out of it!
As far as I know, we are still on schedule... this is one of those things that could get pushed though. I have been told that work has been done, I don't know how far along it is. We'll know soon and I am pushing for some more tasty info before it goes to TC.
Pub 9 is such an insanely huge and critical test... along with everything else that's going on... leaking tasty info is in short supply. It does not mean the work has been stopped, just that they aren't willing to take the time to construct a nice hint.
We're scheduled to come in during some wild stuff... so it's been a lot like throwing a snowball at the Devs in the middle of a snow storm. 
To TH's credit, he has given me two "calm down, I hear you, it's being handled" replies this week, one email today and one post the other day.
Also, things like the Musician/Dancer same time Buff Bug and other buggy buff stuff our "fix" left us with are all still going through the normal channels and I am getting feedback on those.
I am getting hints like "the Social players are going to be happy soon" and "we think you'll be pleased" from various big names... *cough* *shakes Devdecoder ring* ... nope, I don't know what it means, lol. It sounds good though.
So... my mood is hopeful, I know they are listening, as soon as I have solid stuff to share, I will.
Message Edited by Panthu on 05-26-2004 08:46 PM
I think that's great news, Panthu. I've been pretty excited about all the new stuff that has come (the droids) and is coming (the dungeons.) I'm pragmatic enough to realize that they have an awful lot on their plate. And, I've said this before and I'll say it again. The devs over at SWG stream content in rather rapidly, IMO. On the vast majority of threads that I see where people are lambasting them I kind of feel sorry for them. LOL. To be quite honest, I think that for the most part they are doing a very brilliant job at what they do and I feel they deserve credit when credit is due. Despite my annoyance (to put it mildly) regarding the buffing question, I still think this is the best game out there and have no intention of quitting any time soon, and it pains me to see so many people that are so disgruntled. Mainly, because I frankly just don't understand where it's coming from. So, yeah, I'm thrilled to know that our new stuff appears to be coming on schedule and I'm still having a ball with this game. However, just like I like to give credit where credit is due, I feel the need to call them on things that seem completely out of whack and illogical. The buffing answer, unfortunately, is one of those times. I was actually in such a state of shock that I had to sit down and think before I made my post over on the 19 questions thread. I wanted to be constructive, while at the same time make it very obvious how little that answer made sense.
I sincerely hope that this is not the end of discussion regarding self buffing. It's unfortunately something that I can see eating away at me and causing me more and more discontent. And, I can see myself wasting a lot of time posting about it. LOL I almost would have rathered the reason be "immersion" because the experience answer was just so off the wall I don't see how they possibly could think we could take it seriously.
Groovymarlin wrote:
What is there to say about the Musician question? TH says:
"Musicians will not get the ability to buff their own Focus and Willpower. As the system currently exists, if players could buff themselves, they would get experience points every time they buffed themselves and that is bad design."
To which I say: "(obscene foaming at the mouth that would never make it through the profanity filter)"
Message Edited by Groovymarlin on 05-26-2004 04:57 PM
that has to be the biggest crock of bull**edit** i have EVER heard. bad game design? if this is the same answer as he would give for dancers then, i say, as a dancer buffing other people, i get more exp for it? since **edit**ing WHEN? when has this ever given me more exp? i certainly haven't ever noticed it. maybe i capped out my exp gain before i ever noticed a trend, but i have never ehard of this.
do doctors get more exp when buffing themselves, any less, any different than from buffing others? why can't the system be changed then for exp gain? that seems like such a silly thing to stand in the way. i am NOT calling for nerfing doctor, but you know what, this is just absurd that one gameplay class of people can buff themselves while another cannot. i get to dance around and mindbuff my guildmates when we go out for a hunt while i get stuck with nothing but food and drink while they get /both/ ? this answer does not do it for me. in fact, i don't think any of the entertainer answers were much informative. i dont like to be negative and bitter, but i can't stand blatant double standards.