Dancer Archive
Thread: Dance related healing experimentation results and discussion.
Grr, okay second time typing this out, hopefully boards won't go ape on me again.
We did a good job hi-jacking someone elses thread with this topic so its getting moved over here. This thread is for anyone who is interested in discussing or posting results about the relation of dance type to the resulting healing being done at different levels of dancing. Any help with this will be greatly appreciated and will be very helpful to the community as a whole as we try to nail down this issue and see just whats going on. (special thanks to Beery from bringing it up)
Here are a few suggestions if you need some ideas on how to perform these tests to get some helpful information.
This test needs to be performed more then once (twice per same person at least, very important) and I'd suggest at least two different people. Also the level of mind wounds and battle fatigue need to be as close to the same both times. The person being tested on will need to report to you every tick what the wounds are or how much has been healed so its important that you trust to person to keep up with it.
Also I'll give you helpful suggestion as to how to accumulate the needed mind damage with each person. So far the best way I've found is to sample radioactive material. It use to and I believe it still does damage the person sampling it. Also if you don't know how to check the numbers needed its simple, just have them open their character sheet and watch those numbers, they "should" update every tick.
I'd like to thank everyone again that has and will be putting effort into solving this little puzzle, your doing a great service for the dancer community and for me as well. Any levels not tested by others will be tested by me as soon as I have access to the terminal to change my skills around at will. Don't be shy if you have any questions! Thanks!
Okay, I just did one experiment.
I started off with 4/0/0/4 in the Dancer skills. So I was testing the effects of the Fatigue Healing compared to Dance skill.
Since I was disadvantaged in skill points, my highest dance was Popular. I had someone sit down and watch me. He spouted off his BF as I danced. Here are the results.
118
115
109
102
94
88
74
After removing the outliers (the highest and lowest value), I have come to a mean of 6.25 BF.
I tend surrendered all my Fatigue skills. The following results follow.
74
66
62
59
52
47
40
33
25
20
13
5
<1
After removing the outlier and ignoring the final tick (since I cannot measure if it went from 5 to 0 or 5 to -2), I have come to a mean of 6.44 BF.
Due to some inherent flaws in my design, I am not yet ready to conclude that your Dance Knowledge must equal or exceed your Heal skills in order to benefit from the Heal skills. Some errors I have experienced which others may wish to avoid:
- My subject had too low of Battle Fatigue. With only six differences to measure pre-sacrifice and only 11 differences post-sacrifice, the sample size is not very significant.
- I sacrificed the Fatigue skills too early. I should have waited at least nine ticks before stopping and sacrificing the skills. This is tied into the first bullet point.
- The best I could compare this to is Dance Knowledge 0 (Popular). A better test would be to use one of the Knowledge IV dances and then sacrifice the Fatigue skills. Sadly, I did not have this luxury.
- I used the same subject. A better test is to have the same person gain the same amount of Fatigue. Record the data before the sacrfice. Repeat after the sacrifice.
I hope that someone can attempt to duplicate my efforts with better results. For the record, I chose to do absolutely no flourishes, as I feel those may corrupt the data.
As an aside, if you have 0 Wound Heal and 4 Fatigue Heal, then you will lose some excess Ent Heal xp if you lose Fatigue Heal. I accidently lost 280k xp. I can now only get Fatigue Heal I and II back. I intended to gain those skills back, but that's not going to happen for a while. Actually, unless someone else's test prove that Fatigue can still be healed at a higher level with Knowledge at 0, I may put those points elsewhere. If you are to sacrifice skills, make sure you keep Wounds up high so you retain your excess Ent Heal IV.
This can be a good test for those who are thinking of abandoning Dancer. Do something for us before you leave. *grin*
Kuildeous wrote:
"...I tend surrendered all my Fatigue skills. The following results follow..."
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but this test doesn't address the question of whether dance type affects healing. It seems that you're testing whetherfatigue skills make a difference to BFhealing. While the results are interesting, I don't think that's trulywhat we're looking for here, and I'd hate for this thread to be derailed into yet another differentdiscussion.
I think we need to be clear that we're looking to find out if dance type (i.e. exotic3, exotic2, exotic, lyrical, lyrical2, popular, poplock, poplock2, basic and basic2, etc.) affect both BF and wound healing differently - i.e if I, as a Master Dancer,perform exotic3, will it do more to heal BF and mind wounds than if I perform basic.
From my admittedly small-scale tests, I've come to the conclusion that a Master level dance such as exotic3 heals wounds and BFbetter than a low level dance such as basic2. If these tests are confirmed, this is a crucial problem, since it means that dancers must perform only one or two dances (the highest level of dance of whichthey are capable)if they are to do their job most effectively. This cuts down the possibilities for putting on a varied show, virtually taking any potential for artistic expressionout of the profession.
Beery wrote:
Kuildeous wrote:
"...I tend surrendered all my Fatigue skills. The following results follow..."
I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but this test doesn't address the question of whether dance type affects healing. It seems that you're testing whetherfatigue skills make a difference to BFhealing. While the results are interesting, I don't think that's trulywhat we're looking for here, and I'd hate for this thread to be derailed into yet another differentdiscussion.
Well, there is more than one uncertainty. There is the issue of advanced dances vs. basic dances and their efficacy. There is also the issue of Entertainer Healing level > Dance level. This has shown up a couple of times on the board where someone questions is Ent Heal IV is even useful if you only have Dance I. As a dancer, I experimented with Fatigue Healing IV and Dancing Knowledge 0.
The experiment I did was not about dance styles. But I will do that next. I have effectively eliminated myself from the Fatigue vs Dance knowledge experiment for now...well, unless I'm willing to sacrifice Dancer and do the test with Ent Heal vs. Dance. But then, I'd rather start a new character and play with that there.
If you want to be a bit more accurate marking time during your tests, you can open options (CTRL O) and check the "Timestamp Incoming Messages" box. It will timestamp system messages (like xp) as well as chat from other players.
Maybe that will help the accuracy of the tests?
Kuildeous's test may not show the relation of dance vs healing ability but it does hit on another healing issue that I believe is just as important and would love to get more information on as well. If our fatigue and wound lines are broken it would be good to know. It would also be good to know if its them being broke or something to do with dance skill having to be as high or higher then the level of healing in order for the healing to work. I'd say this test shows one side, wish they'd hurry and get my terminal in so I could test the other. 
fa3den wrote:
What gets me is that you are even having to perform this test. I mean surrendering skills? I am a software developer by trade and the algorithms producing these results should be easily unit-testable without even bringing up the entire system. I sincerely doubt that the quality level of this software will ever come above a level that is adequate. I apologize for the rant.
Surrendering skills is not a hardship for me. For some it is, and I would not suggest that experimenters surrender skills that they cannot easily get back.
And I suspect that there is a randomizer thrown in there. You would think that doing the same dance with no flourishes would result in a uniform depletion of fatigue. Or, if not uniform, at least with a correlation with the amount of fatigue (8 points if >200, 7 points 100-200, 6 points <100). But as these numbers show, that's not the case:
74
66
62
59
52
47
40
33
25
So, I postulate that there is a randomizer. We cannot measure the exact effect of our healing.
Which is fine with me. If you shoot an enemy and always score a hit, hit, miss, that would be kind of boring.
No more experimenting for me for a while. I just learned that I'm going to be away from SWG for another week. Whee!
You missed my point, which is that there is no reason for you to be having to perform this kind of testing in using the client as a test platform. All the calculations are done way back on the server. A testing system should be able to take the rules about which skills affect healing and run unit tests automattically against expected results. Then the devs would know that the system is working as they expect and all they need to do is clarify to us how, exactly, the system is supposed to work.
Actually, I think people are testing this is because SOE doesn't tell us exactly how things work. We're not trying to test their system for them, we're trying to reverse-engineer and figure out how the system works.
I'm encouraged by the testing so far. Hopefully I'll be able to add something eventually.
Badeb wrote:
Actually, I think people are testing this is because SOE doesn't tell us exactly how things work. We're not trying to test their system for them, we're trying to reverse-engineer and figure out how the system works.
I'm encouraged by the testing so far. Hopefully I'll be able to add something eventually.
Yep, exactly. I'm sure this has been tested by the devs. If they share that information with us, it'd be great.
However, they're not talking. No one really knows what causes dancers to fall. Some have speculated that you fall less with a full stomach. If we had the exact details, we wouldn't speculate. I'm sure the devs know.
It was only recently that we discovered the Dancing Techniques tree (and Musician Technique) have an actual in-game benefit other than pretty lights. I'm sure this has been in play since Day 1. Did the devs tell us? No, we had to figure it out for ourselves.
On one hand, it's frustrating, because someone with limited skill points may go into a field and learn that it is ineffective.
On the other hand, the experimentation is kind of fun.
Is the code doing what it's supposed to do? I'd say 99.5% of the code is working as intended. We're not testing that. We're trying to figure out all we can so we can plan our characters more appropriately and help others. The mind buffs are a fine example of this.
Dunno if this helps but...
When dancing tonight from some evil diseasing monsters tried exotic and then flourished and was getting around 15 ent healing points a time. Then did a /changedance to basic to save some fatigue and the ent healing xp went to around 7. After that changed back to exotic and it went back up to 15. Always thought entertainment healing xp was based on how much you healed. If it is then that might indicate something. If not I'm just on crack and you can all ignore me.