Dancer Archive
Thread: Attention: HAM Changes In Concept
Tralmek
Fri Jul 23, 2004 8:24 am
#14
I get the feeling that the darker-shaded bar is semi-transparent over the main bar, so if you take damage then the part of the specials bar over the whitedamage would be grey.
This assumes that you can have more special HAM than normal HAM--it might be that if you take a 100 pt hit on your action bar your specials bar also takes a 100 pt hit.
And as to your suggestion that we could take to the battlefields...I don't like the idea of becoming a "bard." Instead of performing out on-location to enhance combat abilities, I would much prefer to do this in cantinas--for example, perhaps adding a function similar to buffing where we could boost someone's alertness levels or other defenses. That way we're not leaving our role as entertainers in the SW universe (and throwing us back a fewcenturies to ancient warfare)and we are still very useful to the combats.
QuixoticJedi1
Fri Jul 23, 2004 9:19 am
#15
An example of how I think this is supposed to work:
You have 1000 mind. You go into combat and are able to spam Unarmed Hit 3 at a cost of 50 health per hit. So, you can unarmed hit ~20 times before you run out of your "special ability" pool. This would be more depending on your regeneration rate.
Now, you take a mind DOT that reduces you all the way to 25 mind. Yikes! You can no longer perform an Unarmed Hit 3. But Unarmed Hit 1 only costs you 10, so you can perform that ~2.5 times before running out of the "special abilities" pool.
Using the specials has no direct effect on your overall Mind pool, but your Mind pool affects your "Special Abilities" pool.
Goldy_Lhim
Fri Jul 23, 2004 10:07 am
#17
*Whips out her protocol droid*
- You will have a new layer to your HAM called "special layer". It will be a slightly darker color than your current bar (like dark green over the light green action bar).
- You perform a special (like a flourish) and the dark green bar starts to go down.
- The dark green bar regenerates faster than your normal bars.
- There is no way to heal this bar, it must regen itself.
- If you are attacked in battle for action damage the bar turns white, your dark green bar is now smaller and cannot regen past the light green color. It will regen back on its own as your light green regens or if someone applies a stim to you.
- You are action wounded in battle, your dark green bar is now lessoned until you see a medic(same as the light green bar).
- Quickness Buffs / Food willhave some effect on how fast you will regen your dark green bar. (rumor?)
Is that the basic jist of it or am I misunderstanding? Action as an example because its the dancer forum 
Edited for the picky.
Message Edited by Goldy_Lhim on 07-23-2004 11:38 AM
QuixoticJedi1
Fri Jul 23, 2004 10:12 am
#18
Goldy_Lhim wrote:
*Whips out her protocol droid*
- You will have a new layer to your HAM called "special layer". It will be a slightly darker color than your current bar (like dark green over the light green action bar).
- You perform a special (like a flourish) and the dark green bar starts to go down.
- The dark green bar regenerates faster than your normal bars.
- If you are attacked in battle for action damage the bar turns white, your dark green bar is now smaller and cannot regen past the light green color. It will regen back as your light green regens or if someone applies a stim to you.
- You are action wounded in battle, your dark green bar is now lessoned until you see a medic (same as the light green bar).
- Quickness Buffs / Food willhave some effect on how fast you will regen your dark green bar.
Is that the basic jist of it or am I misunderstanding? Action as an example because its the dancer forum
That's a perfect summary! :-)
The only other thing to add is:
- Buffs and Food are no longer linear - meaning that the more you stack, the less return you get. Effectively capping the effect of buffs and food.
TheSillyOne
Fri Jul 23, 2004 10:48 am
#19
it might be easier to understand if you look at it from an "attacker" point of view.
You hit your target reducing his ability to perform special moves as well as bringing him closer to incap. He performs a special move that does not bring him closer to incap but does further reduce his ability to perform another special move. He is able to quickly regenerate the ability cost that he has inflicted on himself but if he wants to get back what you've taken from him he'll have to be healed or he'll have to wait to regenerate at a much slower rate. If you attack him with a special move you reduce your ability to perform another special move but you do not bring yourself closer to incap.
High damage attacks at the moment come at a ham cost that was designed to make them less desirable. However, the ability to heal and buff the ham has pretty much reduced the cost of specials to nothing.It's not uncommon for a fighter to spam his highest damage attack at no cost to himself. This has made combat somewhat cookie cutter and lacking in any kind of tactics.
I think what we need to watch out for as dancers is that the attempt to balance combat does not remove our ability to put on a good show. Remember that lyrical and formal base dances are broken. If I can no longer flourish end to end on those dances I'll no longer be willing to perform them. I have no interest in looking like I'm having an epileptic seizure on the dance floor.
QuixoticJedi1
Fri Jul 23, 2004 10:53 am
#20
TheSillyOne wrote:
I think what we need to watch out for as dancers is that the attempt to balance combat does not remove our ability to put on a good show. Remember that lyrical and formal base dances are broken. If I can no longer flourish end to end on those dances I'll no longer be willing to perform them. I have no interest in looking like I'm having an epileptic seizure on the dance floor.
I agree. I'm most interested in knowing how much faster the special abilities bar will fill up. Will we be able to perform high level flourishes end to end without a buff? With a buff? The regeneration rate of the "Special Abilities" is key to our profession. While you don't want a TKM to spam Unarmed 3 ad infinitem, you DO want to be able to perform flourishes at will.
Warryyr
Fri Jul 23, 2004 11:16 am
#21
All in all, really good summary - thanks!
Goldy_Lhim wrote:
*Whips out her protocol droid*
- You will have a new layer to your HAM called "special layer". It will be a slightly darker color than your current bar (like dark green over the light green action bar).
- You perform a special (like a flourish) and the dark green bar starts to go down.
- The dark green bar regenerates faster than your normal bars.
- If you are attacked in battle for action damage the bar turns white, your dark green bar is now smaller and cannot regen past the light green color. It will regen back as your light green regens or if someone applies a stim to you. Actually I think the plan with the specials bar is that it won't be healable or buffable. Once your Action (light green) is healed, the Specials (dark green) would then heal to their max on their own.
- You are action wounded in battle, your dark green bar is now lessoned until you see a medic (same as the light green bar). See above lol.
- Quickness Buffs / Food willhave some effect on how fast you will regen your dark green bar. I don't think they plan on letting food/drink affect the specials bar. Not sure.
Is that the basic jist of it or am I misunderstanding? Action as an example because its the dancer forum
Goldy_Lhim
Fri Jul 23, 2004 11:37 am
#22
I guess I should have worded it better. I didn't mean a stim healed it, just allowed it to regen. Basically light green must be full for dark green to fill. Someone's a bit nit picky.
And I am not sure on the food/buff thing. Some are saying it is, some saying it isn't.
QuixoticJedi1
Fri Jul 23, 2004 11:45 am
#23
Goldy_Lhim wrote:
I guess I should have worded it better. I didn't mean a stim healed it, just allowed it to regen. Basically light green must be full for dark green to fill. Someone's a bit nit picky.
And I am not sure on the food/buff thing. Some are saying it is, some saying it isn't.
The food and drink question, to me, falls under "various buffs" in his remarks. He says that "various buffs" would have a soft cap - I believe food/drink to be included in that. The secondary stats would control the regen rate of both the Action bar and the "Special Abilities" bar. I assume that the special abilities bar will simply have an multiplier applied to it...say, it regenerates at 5 times the speed of the Action bar. But "buffing" those secondary stats, regardless of how they are enhanced, would have an effect on both the regen rate of Action and of the "Special Abilities" bar.
That's my thinking on food/drink...
Panthu
Fri Jul 23, 2004 1:18 pm
#24
Ok, you guys have brought up every single thing I did in the Corr Forum except:
- I did notthink ofLyrical and Formal and the special cases they are (may just have to try to push for a timeline on the fix for these, I don't think they will be able to be worked around once this is in place)
- .... and I also brought up BF effectiveness (I don't think you guys have hit this one yet)
Good news is, I have answers! /cheer
Bad news is, I'm in too much of a hurry to go into detail right this sec. 
(running out the door)
So, very short answer on Show and Performance aspects (and the "over flo" buff technique): We will change with the Specials method as well, it is not clear yet how this will affect our Performance needs. We will need a lot of Dancer testers once this hits TC so we can stay on top of this and be able to ask for anything we need here. 
Very short answer on need for our buffs: while our "Customer" base will shrink, we may become even more needed by those Professons that do rely on Mind heavily. Again, we are going to need to watch this on TC so we can try to get any special considerations during the Testing Phase that we might need.
More when I get back! Stay vocal in the big thread and play nice out there.
DanceRulez
Fri Jul 23, 2004 3:01 pm
#25
It seems to me that there are a couple of major effects this will have on us. For one thing the symbiotic relationship that dancers have had with medics will go away. Since we generally don't get into too much combat in cantinas, we don't have to worry about damage and wounds, so basically for us it's just a matter of maintaining our action pool for specials (as opposed to damage). Since this specials pool cannot be healed, we will no longer be able to rely on medics to keep us going, and they will no longer be able to rely on us for gaining healing XP. This, to me, is a good and bad thing. It was always convenient for someone to come along and give me a little stim to keep going, so we would be giving that up, but on the other hand it will be a little more realistic in that some downtime may be required periodically (when you dance you DO get tired and need to rest sometimes). Besides I always kinda wondered what they were pumping into me to keep me going when I had run out of energy, and whether I should be concerned about what effects it might be having on me. 
Of course this leads to the more important point, that it sounds like there's the potential that dancers and musicians may have forced downtime with no way to recover from it but to sit it out. This could be a bad thing for us as I see it. Whereas limiting combatants abilities on the battlefield helps keep players from being too powerful and encourages the use of special tactics to compensate for it, forcing us to have downtime could have bad effects on both us and our clients. How many times has someone come in for a buff, when your action bar was almost gone, but he (or she) gives you a big heal or you took a shot or two of Acc, for a quick boost? Under this new system, if your action is almost gone, there will be no way to increase your action points to give the buff right away. You'll have to sit down and both of you will have to wait for your specials action bar to regenerate. In our profession we kinda need to be ready on demand. We don't want to have to worry about conserving our action by sitting around until someone comes in. We want to already be dancing or playing when someone comes into the cantina looking for healing. Right now we do this by knowing that we can get buffs or heals most of the time to keep us going. Under the new system, I'm not sure what we will have. I do suspect that buffs to secondaries will help in sustaining both the specials and damage pool (that's my take on how it was described anyway - just that both pools regenerate at different rates, but by boosting our regeneration stat, the rate of regeneration of both pools should be increased). Thus a buff might help us to last longer, but it seems they want to eliminate the infinite energy pool so we may still run out of action at some point even when buffed.
It is this latter point that really needs careful examination. Unlike combat where limitations on actions are important for balance and interesting tactics, our profession really doesn't have such concerns. Our professions kind of depends on our ability to keep performing for as long as possible. There's not really any "imbalance" in us keeping going (except possibly in terms of helping limit XP gains). This is especially important in terms of our ability to do mind buffs. While we can stop and rest in the middle of a buff, we really don't want to HAVE to do this. Right now we can either do a basic dance, or with a buff (or continuous heals) we can do an advanced dance and be able to complete a buff without stopping. Under the new system, it's not clear to me that this will still be the case. I think they may need to reevaluate how we use action for leveling, healing, and for buffs, and make some decisions on how long we should be able to last doing those activities before needing a rest.
Of course this leads to the more important point, that it sounds like there's the potential that dancers and musicians may have forced downtime with no way to recover from it but to sit it out. This could be a bad thing for us as I see it. Whereas limiting combatants abilities on the battlefield helps keep players from being too powerful and encourages the use of special tactics to compensate for it, forcing us to have downtime could have bad effects on both us and our clients. How many times has someone come in for a buff, when your action bar was almost gone, but he (or she) gives you a big heal or you took a shot or two of Acc, for a quick boost? Under this new system, if your action is almost gone, there will be no way to increase your action points to give the buff right away. You'll have to sit down and both of you will have to wait for your specials action bar to regenerate. In our profession we kinda need to be ready on demand. We don't want to have to worry about conserving our action by sitting around until someone comes in. We want to already be dancing or playing when someone comes into the cantina looking for healing. Right now we do this by knowing that we can get buffs or heals most of the time to keep us going. Under the new system, I'm not sure what we will have. I do suspect that buffs to secondaries will help in sustaining both the specials and damage pool (that's my take on how it was described anyway - just that both pools regenerate at different rates, but by boosting our regeneration stat, the rate of regeneration of both pools should be increased). Thus a buff might help us to last longer, but it seems they want to eliminate the infinite energy pool so we may still run out of action at some point even when buffed.
It is this latter point that really needs careful examination. Unlike combat where limitations on actions are important for balance and interesting tactics, our profession really doesn't have such concerns. Our professions kind of depends on our ability to keep performing for as long as possible. There's not really any "imbalance" in us keeping going (except possibly in terms of helping limit XP gains). This is especially important in terms of our ability to do mind buffs. While we can stop and rest in the middle of a buff, we really don't want to HAVE to do this. Right now we can either do a basic dance, or with a buff (or continuous heals) we can do an advanced dance and be able to complete a buff without stopping. Under the new system, it's not clear to me that this will still be the case. I think they may need to reevaluate how we use action for leveling, healing, and for buffs, and make some decisions on how long we should be able to last doing those activities before needing a rest.
Panthu
Fri Jul 23, 2004 11:20 pm
#26
Are you guys waiting for me to say more... or are you just ok with waiting for this to hit TC? Cause... I can go on... like, a lot... mwa ha ha!
BTW, WTG on getting an answer from the all knowing Keldarin in the big thread La'lepa! ... and /cookie Lei for asking about us like a brave Dancer
Keldarin answered my Dancer specific questions earlier which I can babble on about forever, but if you guys are not worried about this, I don't want to force it on you...
I know Deila has said that she thought a lot of what we get snarky about in here will go away once this system goes into place... and Warryyr on the other hand brought up the bard move we could ask for here if we wanted it and I am pretty sure that is not what Keldarin wants for us, but I also don't know how long we'll have to wait for the super cool real Show stuff he would like for us and this might be our only chance at something like this... but, Warryyr is a Musician, so we can send him back to NewJedi if the B word and Blue Stimming still freaks you guys out too badly. 
Let me know!