Dancer Archive

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NJ62 wrote:

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AnimalMagnet wrote:

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NJ62 wrote:
Alternatively the l33t d3wds might learn some manners in order to get what they want.

Any gunbunny learns pretty quickly that if you annoy the local doctor, you're killing nunas for the day. Now substitute entertainer for doctor.

Instead of separating out the l33t d3wds becuase they are intolerable, perhaps giving them some life lessons in manners might be a better approach. But the only lessons are hard lessons, learned when something they "need" is denied because of their attitude.

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Maybe so, but I'm not just talking about them. There is still a very large PvE/PvP/FS/Jedi grinding population, and especially on the more populous servers I think the live entertainer group is neither able nor necessarily willing to provide service for so many. Take doctors as an example, the live buffers spend hours at a time hitting the same macro at the Coronet starport, and there's little time for anything else while this is going on. I doubt whether that proposition is very appealing to most entertainers.

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At the moment, entertainers spend hours in the cantina waiting for customers and not getting paid. I would think that having customers and getting paid would be preferable.
Will every customer servedget a complimentary lesson in manners to boot?

You seem to think that most entertainers would prefer to be anywhere but the cantina doing "important stuff."

Please explain where you've pulled this from?

However, to many, if not most, entertainers, entertaining in the cantina is the important stuff - and until buff bots appeared, entertainers wanted to be in the cantinas (in fact, so did everyone else.)

Personally the afk entertainers are more intrusive in the cantinas than the buffbots, and removing recursive macros won't necessarily eliminate them.

As for "willing and able"... well numbers are expected to grow with buffbots disposed of ruining the atmosphere.

Conjecture...

Besides this, as seen now, a single buffbot is capable of servicing about 1/4 of the server, or more. A duo of a dancer and a musician can buff 18 group members simultaneously in under 2 minutes. That's a full hunting party every two minutes. Yes, I think they can handle the crowds.

First, able...your example is assuming that duo is available 24/7, which obviously they won't be. So can we expect to see dancer/musician duos fighting for customers during peak times, then no entertainers available during off-times? Second, willing: I can't imagine how it could be satisfying to run a group in which the average group member stays for 2 minutes before leaving, and in which invitation requests are coming in every30 seconds during peak times. Thinking on that is seems like you're actually becoming a live-buffbot.

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AnimalMagnet wrote:

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NJ62 wrote:

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AnimalMagnet wrote:

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NJ62 wrote:
Alternatively the l33t d3wds might learn some manners in order to get what they want.

Any gunbunny learns pretty quickly that if you annoy the local doctor, you're killing nunas for the day. Now substitute entertainer for doctor.

Instead of separating out the l33t d3wds becuase they are intolerable, perhaps giving them some life lessons in manners might be a better approach. But the only lessons are hard lessons, learned when something they "need" is denied because of their attitude.

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Maybe so, but I'm not just talking about them. There is still a very large PvE/PvP/FS/Jedi grinding population, and especially on the more populous servers I think the live entertainer group is neither able nor necessarily willing to provide service for so many. Take doctors as an example, the live buffers spend hours at a time hitting the same macro at the Coronet starport, and there's little time for anything else while this is going on. I doubt whether that proposition is very appealing to most entertainers.

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At the moment, entertainers spend hours in the cantina waiting for customers and not getting paid. I would think that having customers and getting paid would be preferable.
Will every customer served get a complimentary lesson in manners to boot?

You seem to think that most entertainers would prefer to be anywhere but the cantina doing "important stuff."

Please explain where you've pulled this from?

However, to many, if not most, entertainers, entertaining in the cantina is the important stuff - and until buff bots appeared, entertainers wanted to be in the cantinas (in fact, so did everyone else.)

Personally the afk entertainers are more intrusive in the cantinas than the buffbots, and removing recursive macros won't necessarily eliminate them.

As for "willing and able"... well numbers are expected to grow with buffbots disposed of ruining the atmosphere.

Conjecture...

Besides this, as seen now, a single buffbot is capable of servicing about 1/4 of the server, or more. A duo of a dancer and a musician can buff 18 group members simultaneously in under 2 minutes. That's a full hunting party every two minutes. Yes, I think they can handle the crowds.

First, able...your example is assuming that duo is available 24/7, which obviously they won't be. So can we expect to see dancer/musician duos fighting for customers during peak times, then no entertainers available during off-times? Second, willing: I can't imagine how it could be satisfying to run a group in which the average group member stays for 2 minutes before leaving, and in which invitation requests are coming in every 30 seconds during peak times. Thinking on that is seems like you're actually becoming a live-buffbot.

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I'm just pointing out that there will be playstyle changes, and not necessarily good ones, that will be required. I haven't seen these addressed anywhere amid all of the clamor about afk-buffbots. There's really no need to be so defensive about it.

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Woah! Speaking of being defensive... NJ may have drawn some inferences from what you said, but they weren't unreasonable, and she never attacked anything you said. No one ever said that there wouldn't be playstyle changes on both ends of this, but think about it this way. Is it fair for only the combat players to get what they want and have fun, or should both sides try to give a little to reach an acceptable compromise?

For one thing, this whole 24/7 idea needs to be put into perspective, because it one of the larger issues that bots have blown out of proportion. This is a game where people want to play it for fun with the time they have. No ATK players of any kind entertainer or otherwise are going to play 24/7. It's simply not possible or reasonable to be able to expect to find all player provided goods or services 24/7 *unless possibly* you make a strong effort to get to know a wide variety of players on your server to cover all the common needs you have while playing. Have you ever needed a stat migration, but didn't know any ID's on and didn't happen to find any in the ID tents? Have you ever needed a space ship part, but the Shipwrights you know weren't on and you couldn't find just the right part on any of the vendors you check? Have you ever needed a doc buff, but didn't know any on and didn't find any at any med centers or out in front of the starports? What do you do then? At this point you can either try asking around for what you need, try making friends with more people in the profession you need, or just do without until a friend does log in or you find someone who will do what you need at a reasonable price. (Granted there's always the "just buy an alt to do what you need so you don't have to rely on other players" option, but that just seems to go against the whole point of the multiplayer game experience.) It's always frustrating to us when people complain to us real players that we can't be available 24/7 to service them at their whim when and where we need it as if we are meant to be slaves or something. It's not fair, and it's not fun for us, and it wouldn't be nearly the issue it is now if there weren't bots out there raising the expectation of other players that entertainers should be available in the same place all the time. The only other services that are available 24/7 are training, vehical/spaceship repair, and the bazaar/vendors (and there's no guarantee on the stock that will be available).

But let's take a look at the other side of this coin for a moment. While no individual ATK entertainer will be available 24/7, that doesn't mean that there is not 24/7 coverage. I expect that on most, if not all, servers there are one or more live master musicians and dancers available who would be willing to buff at any time of the day. You may not know them or where they are, but that doesn't mean that they are not there. Now you may say that this is conjecture on my part, but it would be just as much conjecture on your part to say that there are none at any given time unless you happen to know every player that happens to be online at that moment. As it so happens, there are tools available that happen to make entertainers a little easier to find than some other professions. Many servers have an ent channel that live entertainers will monitor if not use to chat actively and will be more than willing to help someone find a live entertainer for healing or a buff. There is also the /register feature that entertainers can use to let people know at a glance which cantinas, theaters, or hotels on a planet are actively staffed. This feature is somewhat newly fixed, and more people, both ents and ent users should learn about it and use it. Finally, the entertainer community on many servers is fairly close knit meaning that many entertainers know other entertainers on the same server. You probably know of at least one live entertainer yourself. You could always ask any entertainer friends you have who else they know who would be available for buffs, and you could probably start creating your own list of live entertainers and will probably find one or more of them on most of the time. Even if not, you can ask around in your expanded group of friends for more names, and maybe sooner or later you'll find that entertainer that's around during the infamous 'off-hours', that you never knew before. SWG is played by people from around the world and what you may consider 'off-hours' other people may consider 'prime time'.

The last thing I would like to point out, is that it seems like when people bring up the point of "what are we going to do for mind buffs if bots aren't around?", they never seem to remember that a lot of things are changing - not just AFK macros. Don't forget that in addition to the removal of AFK macros, the entire combat and HAM systems are currently being revamped and will soon be changed. The devs have already previewed the fact that in the new system, no one bar of health, action, or mind will cause incapacitation or death. All three will have to be drained first. That means that mind will no longer be the weak point and critical factor of combat as I guess it is now. Those mind buffs that many people think are so important now, may not be so crucial and not as big a deal once the new combat system is finalized. We also don't know when these changes are going to be added in. There's no indication now of when the macro system changes are going to be made, but we do know that the combat and HAM changes are currently under development. As far as we know, the HAM update stand a better chance of being released first. That was the general plan as we originally heard it, though the plans can certainly change, and they do have more developers available to address more issues at the same time now. In addition to that there is also the Entertainer profession revamp coming up probably in the somewhat near future that could change our gameplay and functionality in a way that we can't even guess yet. In any case it's difficult for either side to really predict what will happen once AFK macros are removed because you're really talking about a lot of ways that the players could change as well as the game itself, but it is certainly reasonable to guess that there will have to be adjustments to make for all players involved. I do think that if the devs can make the right decisions about what adjustments to make, most of the players will settle into roles where they can have fun with their own playstyles, and help others to have fun in theirs.

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AnimalMagnet wrote:

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NJ62 wrote:
Alternatively the l33t d3wds might learn some manners in order to get what they want.

Any gunbunny learns pretty quickly that if you annoy the local doctor, you're killing nunas for the day. Now substitute entertainer for doctor.

Instead of separating out the l33t d3wds becuase they are intolerable, perhaps giving them some life lessons in manners might be a better approach. But the only lessons are hard lessons, learned when something they "need" is denied because of their attitude.

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Maybe so, but I'm not just talking about them. There is still a very large PvE/PvP/FS/Jedi grinding population, and especially on the more populous servers I think the live entertainer group is neither able nor necessarily willing to provide service for so many. Take doctors as an example, the live buffers spend hours at a time hitting the same macro at the Coronet starport, and there's little time for anything else while this is going on. I doubt whether that proposition is very appealing to most entertainers.

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At the moment, entertainers spend hours in the cantina waiting for customers and not getting paid. I would think that having customers and getting paid would be preferable.

You seem to think that most entertainers would prefer to be anywhere but the cantina doing "important stuff." However, to many, if not most, entertainers, entertaining in the cantina is the important stuff - and until buff bots appeared, entertainers wanted to be in the cantinas (in fact, so did everyone else.)

As for "willing and able"... well numbers are expected to grow with buffbots disposed of ruining the atmosphere. Besides this, as seen now, a single buffbot is capable of servicing about 1/4 of the server, or more. A duo of a dancer and a musician can buff 18 group members simultaneously in under 2 minutes. That's a full hunting party every two minutes. Yes, I think they can handle the crowds.

Message Edited by guinnessity on 02-15-2005 03:25 PM

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guinnessity wrote:

P.S.: I also do not understand while its only entertainers that are brought in connection with recursive macros....... name one profession where it is not possible to grind with recursive macros! I know that the following can be done with these macros: all combat professions, medic/doctor professions, all artisan professions, of course the ents, and those that i missed

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That's just the thing. It's NOT just entertainers and that's why they have to just ditch the whole system. Beacuse everyone is abusing it, so they have to get rid of it. If it was just entertainers, they'd just revamp us. But what's the point in revamps if the whole game falls apart beacuse 99% of the people aren't even playing their characters?

Message Edited by PoetDancer on 02-15-2005 08:51 AM

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guinnessity wrote:

Basically I agree with you but this will not be a working solution!

When you attack all others for their way to play differently then you make yourself attackable for your way AND for the kind you make your statements.

Others have the right to play their way! We are not talking of one or two but many players who pay as much as you do!

As I said: the solution can only be found together and not against each other! PERIOD.

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Buffbots don't play. Its impossible to play a buffbot, because players don't make the sort of decisions buffbots make. Ifbuffbots played, they would act like players act, and not stay in the same place giving out mechanics because its programmed to do so, at all hours, for no other purpose but to make a prime character, guild, or city have an advantage over someone else who doesn't do it.

Unattendence is not a playstyle. It is an abandonment of play. No matter how you slice it, you cannot convince me that logging in and pressing F1, turning off the monitor, and going to the movies is play. It is not. Yet the character left in such a state mimics the functions of live players. That is a bug in the code, is exploitive, and does not give any player an incentive to play a dancer, if non-play can accomplish so much more than play.

I will attack unattendedness, and I will continue to point out that it is exploitive. They do not "play differently." They do not play at all. And I don't want them mucking up the environment on the servers where real players are trying to play.

A working solution is to have individuals and guilds that cannot or will not work within the constraints placed upon them to either go without, or find a player. NOT PLACE A NON PLAYER. Don't tell me it can't be done. We had little difficulty doing it in the summer of 2003.

I will not tolerate cheaters in my game experience. If SOE tolerates cheaters, it only means that SOE doesn't value players.

Shi'ann pretty much said most everything I would have said

I honestly don't believe that buffs are going to be of much importance after the combat upgrade, so that negates a lot of things being said in this thread. I'm sure they will still be desired for large scale hunts, but that remains to be seen. I also am anticipating quite a few of the l33t types leaving the game because that play style just isn't going to work well anymore. People that have been playing the game from the "run in like an idiot, spam "spin attack" or "other special I win key" and have never actually tried to learn tactics (whether needed or not) are going to have a very difficult time I believe.

I remember actually learning to single pull stuff (eventhough I didn't have to) just so I'd know how. I have also beat template stackers when I was carrying only one elite combat profession simply because I used tactics and they seemed to think they were unbeatable.... this is coming from someone (me) that absolutely hates PvP. People that have not learned tactics and have no patience, will more than likely be very disappointed after the combat upgrade and nothing could make me happier

As for my dancer side. I only buff when I want to, which is very rarely. I only dance when I want to... which has been becoming rarer and rarer. Not saying I'll ever drop dancer though. I tried and I love my dancers template too much to do it. The thing I find funny is that people don't seem to understand that you do not have to be grouped to get a buff from an entertainer...