Dancer Archive

I think I'm ready for our gameplay to no longer be associated with death penalty. I would prefer that interaction with us provide positives to others, rather than be a means of gating their playstyle. Granted, with the removal of mind wounds and reduction of BF post-CU, our healing lines and their xp reqs need to be revisited in a Big, Bad Way. But I don't want us to have any further repercussions from any changes in game dynamics designed to benefit us and ultimately hurting others.

I think this gets at the fundamental conundrum of the healing professions -- Doc for wounds, at least when they used to get healing XP for healing wounds, and especially entertainers for Battle Fatigue.

The problem is that Battle Fatigue to a player of a combat-only character = down time.

If the person is a hybrid with entertainer, healing BF is fun (pesumably) and not a chore. I knew a master musician/master carbineer at one point, who used to love coming into the cantina and jamming with us -- and not just because he had BF. So to him BF was not an issue. When my own character was dancer/carb and then dancer/pistol, BF was not an issue again, because I danced anyway (and more than I fought) so it was always healed. For such a person, entertainment/cantina time is not down time.

If a person is hybrid with crafting, then it is also not too much of an issue. You get yourself a crafting station droid, and carry some supplies around, and you can craft things while you sit listening to music and chatting up entertainers. I had a good friend who was a tailor and did this all the time. We'd be performing while she sat there making custom orders for patrons or whatnot. Again, for such a person this is not down time.

But now imagine if you will my alt, who is an MCH/MTKA/Master Brawler. Ever iota of her skill points and everything she is about, is combat and/or wilderness exploration. She doesn't always do combat per se, but if not, then she wants to be out in the wild taming animals (though, admittedly, the CU bugs have made me, her player, not want to do that as much). A typical player with such a template is interested primarily in combat, and sees waiting, of any sort, to do more combat, as a burden. I remember when the CU first started and there were no instant stim packs of any report to go around, and people had to sit waiting to heal up 2,000 health between lair fights, tons of complaints on guild chat about, you guessed it -- "down time". After all, you are hunting for the purpose of hunting; you are a combat character for the purpose of getting into combat. Why in the world would you want the game to have (many) features in place to PREVENT that?

And yet, it is this very thing, the "down time," that makes entertainers useful. By giving huge amounts of BF to a combat character, you are forcing him to seek the services of an entertainer, thereby giving at least healing and quite possibly money (in tips/covercharge/etc) to the entertainer. That is, entertainers can only GAIN something by the equal and opposite LOSS on the part of someone else (in this case, the combat-only player). We gain from the inconvience of their BF.

Fundamentally, this is a flawed system. It is seen as a pretzelized "justification" for entertainers, as in, "Well the devs could not think of anything useful for entertainers so they invented this stupid BF thing." We gain experience more rapidly when the devs are essentially "mean" to the combat players (by heaping BF on them), and we don't gain experience when the devs are "nice" (by keeping BF to a minimum). See, the problem is that normal players hate getting BF and they are thrilled that the new system doesn't give you much, if you play smart. Heck, I play a master entertainer/master dancer with one character, and even so, on my alt, I still hate getting BF, because it means, "Now I have to go find an entertainer" and they are hard to find... particularly when you refuse to get healed by AFKers, as is my normal pattern.

Admittedly the devs caused some of this problem by their mis-management of the entertainment professions from the get-go. Their position of "well you guys are socializers so you can take care of yourself," was a direct cause of the massive hemorrhaging of entertainers after the early months of the game, and this led to empty cantinas. Early on, you could walk into almost any cantina and the BF would go away quickly. Now, there have been times when it was a chore even to find AFK entertainers let alone live ones, and so BF is a major annoyance because (like wounds when there are no docs present in the med centers) you can't get rid of it if you can't find an entertainer. So now it is hampering your game play -- your fun -- for the sake of some other player being made to "feel useful."

Because of all this, I'm not clear that we should be wanting or asking for more BF to be handed out. Rather, I'd like to see us with a more positive role (inspiration buffs is a clumsy, ham-handed implementation that needs to be totally and completely thrown out and re-done, but the basic IDEA -- that we help people achieve their goals -- is right on the money). Your character isn't unplayable if you can't manage to find an inspiration buff, but it *is* unplayable if you have 500 BF and you can't get it healed. And it can be very annoying if you have to spend 15 minutes sitting around getting healed instead of doing whatever you think of as "the fun stuff."

So, rather than saying, "More BF please," I would ask for three things instead:

1. More XP per BF healed and inspiration granted, please.
2. Less XP required to level up, especially for healing, please.
3. More interesting, varied, interactive (in their application), positive effects on players, please.

C

As usual, Esharra said the same thing I did, and she said it earlier, better, and more concisely.

C

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Esharra wrote:
I think I'm ready for our gameplay to no longer be associated with death penalty. I would prefer that interaction with us provide positives to others, rather than be a means of gating their playstyle. Granted, with the removal of mind wounds and reduction of BF post-CU, our healing lines and their xp reqs need to be revisited in a Big, Bad Way. But I don't want us to have any further repercussions from any changes in game dynamics designed to benefit us and ultimately hurting others.

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WhiteSwan wrote:

this was lost healing xp for entertainers who are now forced to go AFK

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WhiteSwan wrote:

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This annoyed the hell out of me as this was lost healing xp for entertainers who are now forced to go AFK to gain the Master boxes in Dancer and Musician (I'm averaging 500 healing xp an hour, Thats 50 days gameplay to get enough xp to master dancer !!!)

Suggestion :

Lets have entertainers have the ability to heal BF as unique to them abd remove the ability form the (already IMO overpowered) Jedi

or

Lets have a 'consent' option when someone tries to heal us

Theres nothing more dispiriting to an entertainer to see a 'kind' Jedi walk in the cantina and immediatly start healing everyones BF

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I do like your suggestion about required consent, maybe it would be interactive for both sides, however I strongly disagree with your opinion of entertainers being forced to AFK.

No one is twisting their arm, to me AFK zombies don’t need no help gaining exp and I would never /watch one even if it was the last zombie in the galaxy.

One of my characters has had 150 health wounds for about 3 weeks now. I've tried sitting in a med center, logging out in a med center, you name it and I've tried it. But I don't have the patience to just sit a combat character in an emptymed center for hours which is what I'm guessing it would take to get them healed. So I'm not interested in seeing more wounds put into the game. I have absolutely no idea why they removed that healing ability from novice medic. I'm sure someone had a reason for it but I certainly hope they change it. I'm glad they got rid of the tumble grinders since most of the time you couldn't find someone to heal you because they were always afk. But it was fairly easy to use 15 SP to pick up novice medic and heal your own. You can do it with entertainer but not with healing. It makes no sense at all to me.

Rather than add more wounds I think they just need to revisit, and very, very quickly, the healing role for entertainers. How many times have they insisted we aren't healers? *Points to healing column* Then how about doing something about this?

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WhiteSwan wrote:
Lets have entertainers have the ability to heal BF as unique to them abd remove the ability form the (already IMO overpowered) Jedi

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Actually, most Jedi who do have healing, are doing WOUNDS not Battle Fatigue. They're doing what Docs used to do, heal players while their BF is being healed by entertainers. A Jedi has to master out healing to be able to heal BF; actually has to have Master Force Healing. Most Jedi just get enough Force Healing points to heal wounds for themselves and others, which does not require Master Force Healing.

I have zero desire to be a Jedi. I think it's horrible there are so many. However, I have no problem clearing up this aspect because many entertainers are not aware of the above facts. We easily blame the jedi for "stealing" our XP, when in fact, if it's "stealing" from anyone, it's the Doctor. Basically, there isn't much incentive to play a Doctor anymore financially, and the healing by a doc is *much* slower than the healing from a jedi.

This is sad.

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Ikewe wrote:
I have absolutely no idea why they removed that healing ability from novice medic. I'm sure someone had a reason for it but I certainly hope they change it.

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The reason is, they don't want us dabbling anymore. They won't say it out loud, but it's quite evident that this is the case. It used to be with novice medic and a good set of stims you could get by just fine. They don't want you doing that anymore. So now if you want to heal your own wounds it's going to cost enough skill pts that you're going to have to be serous about it (35 SPs total, or thereabouts). No more dabbling.

Except entertainer. That's the one class left where you can be 100% effective at everything we do in terms of game mechanics by just taking the novice box.

C

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Gothywench wrote:

We easily blame the jedi for "stealing" our XP, when in fact, if it's "stealing" from anyone, it's the Doctor.

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Docs only get xp for healing during combat these days. The Jedi in town aren't stealing from them.

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Gothywench wrote:

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WhiteSwan wrote:
Lets have entertainers have the ability to heal BF as unique to them abd remove the ability form the (already IMO overpowered) Jedi

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Actually, most Jedi who do have healing, are doing WOUNDS not Battle Fatigue. They're doing what Docs used to do, heal players while their BF is being healed by entertainers. A Jedi has to master out healing to be able to heal BF; actually has to have Master Force Healing. Most Jedi just get enough Force Healing points to heal wounds for themselves and others, which does not require Master Force Healing.

I have zero desire to be a Jedi. I think it's horrible there are so many. However, I have no problem clearing up this aspect because many entertainers are not aware of the above facts. We easily blame the jedi for "stealing" our XP, when in fact, if it's "stealing" from anyone, it's the Doctor. Basically, there isn't much incentive to play a Doctor anymore financially, and the healing by a doc is *much* slower than the healing from a jedi.

This is sad.

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I play a Doctor to help others, not for the financial benefits. I did the starport buffing thing a couple of times, but it was too much of a pain for my tastes (lines that would get STUPIDLY long, really rude and nasty people, scam artists, and so on).

Personally, I could care less if Jedi heal wounds better than me. What I don't like is that they can heal wounds about 3times better than me, or more (I heal for around 80 wounds per shot, my Jedi with wound healing heals for 250 wounds max per shot).

Mind you - a Jedi's wound healing is NOT affected by Battle Fatigue. Another huge advantage to them. I had a patient with 1000BF, and I was healing for 21 wounds per shot when they had 800. At this rate, it would have taken me nearly 11 minutes to heal all of their wounds (800/21 = about 38 heals at 17 seconds roughly per heal, 648 seconds or 10.8 minutes).

I said, "Don't move, be right back." I logged out and got my Jedi, and healed them in less than 10 seconds with minimal Force cost...at 250 wounds per heal.

So yeah - healing by Doctors being much slower than a Jedi's healing is an understatement.

I know some people don't like Jedi, but I certainly do - because it actually lets me be an effective Doctor, as opposed to my Master Doctor.