Dancer Archive
Thread: Tweaks that could possibly help revive the profession.
- Elite entertainers should be able to self enhance.
- The ability to passivelyenhance should be removed.
- Change the /setperformance command so that it does not require a player to first /watch or /listen. Put this command entirely in the hands of the entertainer.
Watch and Listen commands: Currently a player who wishes to recieve healing or enhancement uses a command to listen or watch an entertaier.
What I propose is eliminate the watch command entirely and leave the listen command in for only one purpose... To hear a musician character play music. All healing and mind enhancing would be driven by the entertainer through the set performance command.
Reachwind wrote:
Here are some ideas to toss around about improving dancer gameplay and game balance.
Entertainer Healing: Currently this works completely passively. We dance or play music and people come in and watch (all the while we heal our own mind at the same time.) People can out of the goodness of their heart, a sense of gratitude or because of a feeling of debt offer us a tip after they heal.
What I have long suggested is change this dynamic to something else. Instead of having people just randomly stroll by and watch or listen to an entertainer have them instead request healing of an entertainer who would then direct a performance to that player having to use flourishes (andd effects) to generate a healing for that person. In this way people that chose to could request a payment for healing up front and people would be forced to interact more with entertainers.
So, I walk into the cantina...where there are who knows how many entertainers at any given time, and I am suddenly blasted by Yells about how much you will heal my battle fatigue and mind wounds for. On top of that BF and Mind wounds vary so much from person to person at any given time, how would you price it? By the amount of BF? Every entertainer would have to take up Novie Medic just to find out how much BF you had so they could price you. The time it would take to set up a deal versus the amount of customers would be horrible. It would be Coronet Starport all over again. Also, if someone is dancing or playing music, they don't have to be staring at you, for you to be relaxed by thier work, it just doesn't make sense.
Entertainer Mind Enhancement: Currently this works through /setperformance (good idea!) or passively by joining a group with them (bad idea!). Currently there is no ability to buff yourself so a person spending the extra skill points to master an elite entertainer profession can only enhance others even while being able to heal themself.
What I suggest is that afew changesbe made;
- Elite entertainers should be able to self enhance.
- The ability to passivelyenhance should be removed.
- Change the /setperformance command so that it does not require a player to first /watch or /listen. Put this command entirely in the hands of the entertainer.
There is nothing wrong with being able to buff someone in your group, they can leave, or you can leave if you don't want them to get a buff.Anyentertainer should be able to buff themselves, not just elite, just like docs. As far as the player having to watch and listen, I like the idea, what if an entertainer who just wants to get xp targets you while your just sitting in the cantina, then they can buff me whether I want it or not. I think it's doctor buffs that need to be changed, they should require a /consent command just like a rez.
Watch and Listen commands: Currently a player who wishes to recieve healing or enhancement uses a command to listen or watch an entertaier.
What I propose is eliminate the watch command entirely and leave the listen command in for only one purpose... To hear a musician character play music. All healing and mind enhancing would be driven by the entertainer through the set performance command.
I personally think the buff command needs to be changed, or the bio command needs to be (/set is the bio. so if you accidentally type /set perform then your bio now reads "perform" Bah!)
I don't tend to dance in the big cities because my time is spent Role Playing and the profession is simply part of my character. It's helped make some of those little issues not be such a big deal to me anymore
But I HAVE danced in large cantinas. I DO go hunting with friends sometimes. And sometimes I need to buff a large group. I do not want to have to specifically set every single person's healing session, and I don't want to have to set every single buff session. That's just a pain in my neck. And what's worse... it makes me like a doctor sitting in coronet who is too busy hitting buttons to chat with a customer.
I do agree that the group buffing things has added to the bot problem, but I would rather see us able to at least be able to "setperform" for more than one person if they removed group buffing.
And I would rather be able to block factions and certain people (and have the list stick instead of clearing all the time) then have to allow everyone... my list of blocked people is very small, but my list of allowed people is huge. Of course forcing us to have to actively heal someone would do something to stop the buffers...
But there is a command to target random people in the room and it would only take adding that to a macro to make the whole issue obsolete.
Reachwind wrote:
After a year of watching passive healing create a situation where AFK has become not only the default skill gain method but also the default healing and enhancing method I thought more people would see the importance of this type of change./shrug guess not.
Don't get discouraged that not everybody agrees with you, hun. As I said, it's different playing styles... using Drygo's thread on what kind of live entertainers we are as reference, I think your idea is the type of change that would be welcomed by people who fit thoroughly in the #3 catagory. People who care about socializing or performing over game mechanics would naturally be less than enthusiastic about having to spend more time manuallytending to the healing process. In my opinion, no play style is wrong (as long as you're actually playing and not leaving your toon on autopilot, of course), but obviously I'm going to look out for my prefered style of play above others since I'm selfish like that... hehe
Ikewe wrote:
I personally think the buff command needs to be changed, or the bio command needs to be (/set is the bio. so if you accidentally type /set perform then your bio now reads "perform" Bah!)
Thank you!! I had no idea how this had happened to my bio! I just figured it was someodd fluke and rewrote it.
Is there a command that tells your character to slide across the floor? Maybe it's not a bug after all....
Ikewe, Master Dancer Shadowfire
Yes, I once had a bio. But, one day I typed /set waypoint, and my bio has been "waypoint" ever since because I'm too lazy to change it.
Sorry for going off topic.
Uh, these were on the list Raven submitted before he retired. Here's how it reads in our submitted issues:
"... have buff set and activate with /setperform and /endperform rather than the person receiving the buff use /watch and /stopwatch"
In the Ent Healing poll I did and submitted to the Devs as the only action I ever personally took against Buff Bots as the Dancer Correspondent I said:
"We do not have the ability to ask for all AFK play to go away. We do not have the ability to ask for all macroing to go away (nor do I think most of us would want to). We have one option as a Profession here, to ask for attended only Functions.
Currently our only functional aspects are 1. Mind Buffing 2. Blue Wound Healing and 3. BF Healing. It is possible to ask that all of these functions become attended only. I understand the RP aspect for allowing all of our Functions to be passive, but RP explanations are made up and scripted after game mechanics are decided. As long as any of our functions can be passed out for free 24/7 to anyone who comes by, they will be. The game isn't going to change, but we can."
Both of these two items had overwhelming support in here. You must understand... passive means not played. Just something that happens while we do something else. As Sirii points out often, we do not currently actively buff even if we are using /setper... it is the patron that controls the actual buffing. It's like we're a buffing item almost.
I think the best solution to a passive type of buff/heal would be an Area Effect. No watch, no listen, no goofy buff failures due to standing, sitting, crossing your eyes, whatever as a patron. Just you are around the Music and the Dancing, of course it is going to Heal your BF, Mind Wounds, and Buff you. The Watch and Listen commands are the true barrier Madame keeps talking about.
Now, I am also in favor of allowing us some control over our own game mechanics. I want it with the Anims, I want it with the Ent Healing, I'll want it with anything we ever get in the future. It's just very silly to me that we would spend all of this game mechanic time and effort on something that we do not actually get a game mechanic role/ability/tool/income/perk/skill out of. *shrug* For those of you offended by the idea of a game mechanic, I would just close your eyes to it's vulgarity and let those of us that do care about it work it out.
I think we should have some sort of targeted, attended only, effort and/or cost involved, method for all of our "services" or "functions." This could be done with the truly passive "no watch/listen" change I described above if we were allowed to set parameters on who we chose to "service." (heh 
)
You could set yourself to Heal/Buff All, Same Faction, Overt Imps, Overt Rebs, All Coverts and Neuts, Group, PA, or only those on your Patron Sheet. Your Patron Sheet would have fields for PA Short Names (RSE) and First Names (Panthu).
For the record, this is on our Issues Submission from last term as well.
There are many ways we could go with this and this is only one of them. Other options would be a truly targeted system like Medical Healing/Buffing or the more Chef like mode of enhancement by creating items that would be Holo Recordings which we would make by Dancing for a “Music Video” type of Sellable Item.
Not dealing so much with application but more of our cost, we have the options of some kind of Dance Game Challenge that would "unlock" your ability to Heal/Buff for a period of time (Passive with Parameters, Targeted, make Holo Recording, whatever), an actual resource cost, a time investment "warm up" routine, or incredible self wounding for an instant application.
Any combination of the above Mode of Applications/Costs would be an improvement to our security against botting no matter what macro or policy changes might come and go. Any could improve our playability and chance to earn an income for our services provided to others.
Also, none of these methods should affect your ability to put on a show.
We currently are not considered Healers in this game by design. I do not personally care if we are to be Healers or are to be Something Else Entirely New in gaming terms. However, having this semi-commitment to a "Healer" role is not working out for us or the rest of the gamebase. It is also my belief that our duties will eventually be given to or at least shared with the Medics. Jedi can heal BF and Mind Wounds with only a damage cost. We have known for quite sometime that Medic stims will most likely Heal Blue Damage again in the coming revamp. Chef’s Brandy has been buffing Players Mind Stats for a while now. The lines are blurring, these things are not ours alone already.
We need to make Ent Healing a real game service with real options for both ourselves and the people who need it… or we need to give it up. Having this quasi-role and not having any control over it or benefits from it or any real relation to any other game mechanic at all is serving no one. It hurts us, it hurts the game, and it keeps the Dev attention we need on our true Dancer Role (entertainment, event hosting, city immersion enhancers, the party people with great anims, props, and costumes that we have creative control over) elsewhere.
Panthu wrote:
You could set yourself to Heal/Buff All, Same Faction, Overt Imps, Overt Rebs, All Coverts and Neuts, Group, PA, or only those on your Patron Sheet. Your Patron Sheet would have fields for PA Short Names (RSE) and First Names (Panthu).