Dancer Archive
Thread: The real solution to the buffbot delimma
This really tackles the PROBLEM of it being AFKable 24/7. A buffbot could still function, but its now a hassle for them since they will have to run out and buy these dazzle packs in order to keep buffing, and their "free" income for their main player (assuming their buffbot is an alt) is reduced greatly since they will have to pay for these packs. The incentive to have a buffbot alt is great at the moment: Macro all day, get tips (some buffbots have high tippers in their bios and it runs upwards of 1 million in tips) and lose no game income in the meantime. 5 stars!
Entertainer uses THE most expensive and coveted resource in the game: Time. It is for this reason that bots are created.
Entertainers can't entertain while moving around which means that to be entertaining they are buring up valuable time (oppritunity costs). If entertainers aren't entertaining when the combat player needs to heal it costs the combat player valuable time.
If you really want to solve the bot dilema all you have to do is make it valuable for players to actually entertain. If dancers and musicians could get unique item rewards and credits for actively playing the characters you would see more folks pick up the skill for enjoyment purposes.
-dc
5* for you. a very creative solution to a long-standing concern for entertainers. i wonder if there are enough image designers to make your first proposal workable, but i'm impressed nonetheless. nice job.
I agree that that would be the problem with the "massage" idea, but I wish it could work. In real life I like to get my nails and feat done and sometimes get a massage. But also I am thinking male dancers would be the ones most likely to get "performance anxiety" 
Im glad that the feedback has been good so far. This is my third dancer I am going for Master Dancer/Master Shipwright with some TK and I am a freelance pilot. I like this combo because i enjoy dancing, artisan and some fighting.
Reachwind wrote:
If you really want to solve the bot dilema all you have to do is make it valuable for players to actually entertain. If dancers and musicians could get unique item rewards and credits for actively playing the characters you would see more folks pick up the skill for enjoyment purposes.
Not likely.
It might make it more enjoyable for those already playing an Entertainer profession, but if a person doesn't find enjoyment in sitting in a cantina all day, all the gifts in the world won't change that.
The only solution is to make it too difficult for the bot operator to continue, while not making the Entertainer professions to cumbersome to enjoy. A delicate balance to be sure.
Most players focus on the c/p/u and don't realize that the reason that "good" resources cost more is because they are more of a pain in the heiney to find = more time to fine = you're paying for time.
There's been an awful lot of backlash against ID's for charging for their services, because they do not cost resources. But the population has accepted the ID pricing and have paid out the nose sometimes - why? Because ID's have to BE THERE, and focused on you, and only on you, and therefore you're taking up the time of a real person, who cannot really do much when he or she is interacting with you.
So if time is worth something, it has to be time where you're concentrating on the person you're buffing. This has been suggested in the past, and bears repeating, is that a mini-game would ensure the buffer's presence, and justify (in the minds of the customer) paying for a service that costs no resources, because the entertainer is devoting his/her univided attention for however long the buff takes to you or your group. Many ID's charge 10k for a 4 minute stat migration. How much should an entertainer charge for 4 minutes of his/her time to give a buff?
Now that I've gone off on perhaps option #3, let me turn to option #2.
I would be a lot more comfortable with option #2 if it were crafting that doesn't depend on resource quality (as with quasi-crafting profs like musician and smuggler). I would also like to see the dazzle packs craftable by the entertainers. Musicians get to craft musical instruments, and there are really no dancer equivalent. I think also that it is a profession-specific item, so it's probably not reasonable to put it in the artisan tree. 1) on a practical level, these will not be lucrative for artisans, so they won't bother with them and 2) doctors can make their own packs dangit. It might also be fun for musicians to make special instruments with "charges" built in for buffing, so instruments used for buffing didn't last forever.
I myself don't mind our resource being time. But if an added cost of crafting or buying something or other ingame resources were put in then the time resource would have to be taken out.
(if any of that makes any sense at all.)
First, I want to say that I am on the anti-buffbot side of the fence. However, the problem is not with the people not behind the bots (although I feel what they do is very rude to ATK entertainers), nor is the problem with macros. The key problem is in the design of the entertainer profession and the key principles of economics.
Chefs, doctors, tailors, architects, weaponsmiths, armorsmith, Bio Engineers, Smugglers and shipwrights all have fairly extensive resource requirements in order to perform their services. Smuggler's resources are perhaps the cheapest of the professions and easiest to obtain, but even they still have to run crates of their product knives/clamps as well as purchase AUK's and WUK's from a weaponssmith or armorsmith. They also have to keep plenty of room in their inventory if they want to spend uninterrupted time slicing and performing services.
Dancers and Musicians don’t have any overhead once they get to master other than their clothes, which don’t really count since every other player has those expenses as well.
The buffbot delima exists only in the entertainer profession because we are the only service based profession with no overhead. You are allot more likely to give it up for free if it was free and easy for you to get it in the first place.
Add overhead.
Solution #1
Bath houses/Massage parlors….
Entertainers could accumulate a unique buildup of statistic called "performance anxiety". The more performance anxiety an entertainer builds up, the more difficult it becomes for them to buff or the more degraded their buffs become in quality (similar to battle fatigue and its affects on doctor's services). In order to get rid of this performance anxiety they must go to a salon and have an ID give them a bath or massage which takes a certain amount of time depending on the ID's level and your amount of anxiety.
Solution #2
Link buffing to our "dazzle" affects rather than flourishing. In order to produce a buff laden "dazzle" we will need "dazzle packs".
Your dazzles would become more like a "certification" to use certain dazzle packs rather than a free dazzle which has no overhead at all. Dazzle packs could be made by anyone who had Artisan 0200 and the number of charges in a Dazzle pack could be affected by the artisan's experimentation abilities, therefore packs form a Master Artisan would be superior to those from a 0200 one. The entertainer might make lower level dazzle packs themselves but the good ones would be made by the artisan. The buff ability would be determined by the pack used, not necessarily by the dazzle effect used.
This would put us more in line with smugglers while eliminating the viability of buff-bots. How many master smugglers do you see running around offering everyone free slices? What buff bot is going to constantly come and check their inventories to see if they have enough dazzle packs and run to their bank/house/vendor to get more just so they can give out free buffs to everyone?
Something to add onto this would be to have the tailor make special entertainer clothes, which could hold dazzle packs. Everytime you use a pack, that clothing decays to some degree (gets worn) so that you eventually need to buy new clothes. These clothes could need resources from a bio-engineer making them slightly more expensive than your average clothing and possibly requiring a custom ID job if you want to keep your style and look good.
Solution #3
Implement both ideas. I think that the real ATK dancers would be totally happy with this because we are about personal interaction anyway. It would encourage entertainers to develop relationships with their artisans, image designers and tailors in addition to their customers.
Other players would gain more respect for us because we had overhead just like everyone else, and they would feel more justified in paying for a services that was not "freely obtained" by the provider.
/discuss
This is just a rough example, but it could be used in this scenario. "Cacaphonous sound" could be countered by "melodious notes." Without using the mini-game (i.e. if you are afk), it might happen that you either take 20 minutes to buff, or you do a fraction of your buffing potential. Using the mini-game, and hitting all the right buttons, you can buff quicker and more effectively. In such a case, there would be no afk macro that would be able to buff as well as an ATK player.
I like the idea of the popup box at the start of a buff, but I think that a minigame would keep the dancers busy during the buff, as well as solve the problem of costs of flourishing by replacing what controls the strength/length of the buff with the minigame rather than flourishing.