Dancer Archive

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MissMargaret wrote:

Let's ask WHO our developers are. Where are they in the game? Have they played an entertainer from the ground floor up? Are there any women on this dev team (seeing as this class is geared towards women and communicators). I will note that I have been playing since August and have YET to see a Dev or a CSR on either of the servers I've played on. Hello! Introduce yourselves!

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I have to repeat this because I feel it is essential to the progress of the entertainer profession. I don't know how many of you saw my thread, but a dev has not posted on an Ent board since November 3!

More details within:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=dancer&message.id=14625

I mean seriously, if there is a dev who plays an Ent as their main and actually enjoys it, what is their opinion on the Entertainer conundrum. If there isn't a dev, why not? I'd like to get some input from a developer standpoint from someone who's played our profession.

Entertainers have a lotta problems, it's about time we are heard!

                        /  \/  \                           
                       /| 0 0 | \                          
+----------------.oooO--|  /  | --Oooo.-------------------+ 
| Doasa Arsim            \_-_/       Events Coordinator   | 
| Master Musician    .oooO   Oooo.   Master Entertainer   | 
| Fifth River Cantina(   )   (   )   Four Rivers, Correlia| 
+---------------------\ (-----) /-------------------------+ 
                       \_)   (_/    

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I hate to be a downer here but its really a waste of time. He said give him 10 issues cause he already knew you had 5 and doesnt want to deal with any of them. Stall tactics its called.

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This is being done in response to us making it clear to them that the entertainers were not happy with the level of communication between the community and the devs.

MissM, it was in reply to you, half serious, half in jest. You're right, communicators is gender-neutral, but you listed "women and communicators" when it could have been communicators.

Sorry if I'm sounding harshish, but being a male, flaming entertainer who wears a Chippendales outfit consisting of black boots, black/white hotpants, and black uniform gloves, somtimes mixed with a white trim-lined shirt, white boots, and sometimes white gloves, or pink bikini leggings and pink uniform gloves(and my list goes on to shorts, skirts, so on and so forth...), it's tiring hearing the whole thing with it being a women's class, or homophobes telling me to put on some clothes, and heck, I still get BS if I'm wearing a full set of clothing like a black suit jacket and black slacks.

In fact, I recently dealt with someone not long before reading your post, which made me >.<! So I was kinda in a mood.

Male dancers are STIFFED. We get the short-end of the stick. Male musicians not so much, it's easier for them to get good clothes and such, because they don't dance, and half their flourishes and songs aren't feminin. Granted, *I* personally don't mind the femininity, but other male dancers do. But again, I'd also love to see more masculine dances in the game, and I'd absolutely DESPISE the Devs making "male version (dance)" and "female version (dance)" for every dance, if you can't choose which version you'd like to do, cause I'd love to do both. But still, for male dancers who want to be more masculine, what do they have except maybe Poplock? Granted, Formal and Lyrical shouldn't be too bad, since it was originally males who did Ballet, but nowadays...

I hope you understand my drift though, darlin.

Plus, you girls have all the cool freaking dresses and the leotard and the fleshwrap and I can't wear them ;____; And that makes me insanely jealous. >.>;

And I'm dead serious. If you saw Zulian or knew anyone who knows Zulian, I'm sure they could tell you *loffs*Didn't mean to offend, but I was just eeeh. We dun' need people to come in and see even dancers stereotyping, even by accident. "Such and such said women and communicators, get a real profession, homo!" Though, replace homo with a more offensive word, which I hate and won't use and insta-deny anyone who says it, but I digress.

Speaking of which, so this isn't COMPLETELY off-topic,

Are any of the new dances that are being worked on more masculine or gender-neutral in form?

This is my first post regarding these issues. Not that they haven't been on my mind . . . .

First, we can't look at this as hopeless. If we do that, then absolutely nothing will be done to enhance our profession. And I disagree with a statement in one of the posts - we are a support class to the fighters. A very important one. Are we ignored? Yes, I belive so. Is this a halfhearted gesture on the part of the devs? I hope not, but I fear so.

Second - refuse to give then just 10 questions!! Give them the whole list, lock, stock and barrel! Why should we be forced to cut down our gripes and wish lists to fit the DEVS parameters?! WE are the ones paying for the game every single month which pays for their salaries!! Just like everyone else! We are not second class citizens of the GFFA, we are a vital part of its design. So don't stop at just 5 more. I mean, what must we do to get the devs' attention and respect? Go on strike?

I will be adding my own list and/or agreements with others already given later (gotta work to pay for this game!). Don't get discouraged fellow entertainers! Get to business!

From your list these are my top issues -- I am really just curious as to what they are doing, when they expect to have changes, the usual.

I limited it to 10. :-)

Mind-buffing self. (ARRRGH! I mean, seriously.)

Reduce amount of healing exp needed to skill up. (with new changes to death system its way to hard to get the required amount of healing exp to gain our skills.)

Fix the lyrical/formal base dance.

Fix Entertainer Missions.

New flourishes, full 8 for every dance. (good ones only please)

Register with location -- lots of problems there! (OK it's not on your list, but it's huge for me.)

Fix all the small cantinas which don't let people register (Dathomir, Dantooine, etc.

The ability to register at outposts, HQ, adventure planets ,non traditional cantinas. Maybe some visual aid to see someone is inside the cantina without having to look at the map? (could have a light/lamp on front door that turns on or off)

Denial of Service Enhancements. /denyService faction:[Rebel|Imperial] and /denyService guild:<guildName>

Faction points for Dancing while overt and healing other overts? (small amount of faction, definitely make it slower then running missions by a lot but still something.)

1, CONTENTapplicable for entertainer classes.

1. We understand that new dances and flourishes are being worked on. Is there any ETA on their release, and can we get more information on what is being done in this process. Is it really full new fleshed out dances, are you just enhancing the old ones with new flourishes, or is it a rehash of the old dances with smoother transitions and flourishes?

2. As per the previous top5 issues request, will there be any additional tools to encourage socialization and teamwork among the dancing community? Some of the tools suggested are in line with the musician profession: /groupstartdance, /groupchangedance, /groupstopdance and perhaps even /groupdistract 1 etc... also Synchdance? Along with these could the possiblity exist of enhanced experience for being in such a group as you well know, dancing in synchronization requires much more coordination with the group as well as cooperation and also encourages a more structured cantina life if you add the additional experience for dancing with this method.

3. It has been recommended that dancers be able to register at Outpost cantinas. It is my contention that the problem with this lies in that if you allow them to register it esentially places the city on the map which is one of the bonuses of having a well populated city and therefore detracts from the actual award. However, I would like to see some gradual changes as the following proposed changes will create significant code changes to the base systems.

1) Add the ability to register at outpost Cantinas and only a visual representation of the cantina on the map within a certain radius around the city.

2) enhance the mission system (not just for entertainers) to allow player missions. The system I envision is similar to the current Email system integrated with the mission postings. Upon selecting a planetary mission terminal, a radial selection becomes available to choose player missions/computer defined missions. After choosing player mission, a create mission can be activated from the selection screen. There should be a variable cost for creating a mission and a 125(more or less) character buffer to enter a short description of the event, a small text box for the coordinates, a rewards box, and a time limit (incremement 1-10 then multiples of 10 min) to achieve the award.

4. System message - A notice of who is /watching you and perhaps a /listwatch command. IMO one of the best reasons for adding such a command is for interaction purposes. If you know player X, Y, and Z are watching you then you know that these are the people you should be "entertaining" or if you want to increase the numbers of people watching you still know who to focus on.

5. Faction points for Dancing while overt and healing other overts? (small amount of faction, definitely make it slower then running missions by a lot but still something.) I would enhance this by putting up factional dancing missions on top of the current mission scheme. Even the Empire needs its own version of the USO

6. Any comments on the current bug situation with several components of the dancing system? Logout not removing registeration, and various other bugs/exploits

7. A large issue not necessarily limited to the dancer profession is a lack of interaction with any developers or a any representative of SoE in reguards to changes being made. It is understood that there are changes being made to current customer relations such as the new forums and ways for the devs to make faster communication possible. What is the possiblity of a "state of the union" in reguards to all classes and the gaming systems in general once a month. Several professions feel that they are completely neglected and while they may not be a large percentage of the playerbase they do have concerns and would like to have them addressed in some fasion. At least let us know of any future plans to help create a better system for communicating in the development process as the current system seems to either be lacking or the player base at large does not know the proper avenues for issuing their complaints.

8. Are there any long term goals for the entertainer (specifically dancer) classes? Are we looking at a phase-out like the mining class in beta or is there some longer-reaching goals that we can look forward to.

9. Not necessarily directly related to Dancers themselves, but with the current situation with Cantinas and theatres are there any plans to introduce some more content and structures to the classes? What I mean here is perhaps an orchestra pit for the theaters where players can arrange seating for musicians to play while actors act on the stage. On that lines will playing while seated (in a theatre) even be feasable or to easily exploitable? Is it possible to get more furniture/clothing/architectural designs created specifically with the entertainment classes in mind?

10. As mentioned elsewhere the ability to deny opposing factions from utilizing your services rather than making user-specific filters required.

I have to state that I disagree with some of the other posts- this is not meaningless. What is meaningless is simply sitting back and letting things pass us by. If we want something done than sometimes you have to become a thorn in their side to make them do what you want so they get you out of their hair (Works REALLY well for home loan agencies that say they'll call you in 15 minutes but don't for 3 days, tel you they'll do something then change their minds... etc)

I'll just put what I see to be our biggest questions (oddly all of them are still issues from what I've seen people write- thinly disguised ones hehehe. Nice)

Are we going to get an ETA on the dance repairs such as the Formal/Lyrical base dance spasms, and the unfinished dances that only have a few non-unique flourishes? Will we ever have a 'complete' dancer in the higher levels? (THEN, will we ever get new complete dances)

Despite the developers view that AFK macroing is alright (in dancing but not surveying apparently), but the developers also state that they want people to enjoy themselves (this is a game after all, games should be fun.)will anything be done to curb this due to the fact that it is ruining the gameplay of other entertainers? (I don't necissarily want it out of the holocron, I wouldn't mind having to do ID and musician now... but I wouldn't AFK it the whole way, the same can not be said about others.)

Are our missions ever going to actually be worth the time and effort involved? Will they ever be double the price of the ticket we have to buy to GET to the place or the time it takes us to drive on our own? (when was the last time Tom Cruise performed for 100 bucks? )

The Buff bug- where suddenly we can't buff someone until they die a second time, will that ever be resolved? Some people blame the entertainers for the problem.

Will we ever be able to mind buff ourselves? (As odd as it sounds, though sometimes a night dancing does help relax a person and all) Medics can do it and since we are a healing class it goes to reason that based on THAT, we should as well

Arethere any plansregardingenhancing the Deny service to be a catch all for denying a whole overt faction, ora guild?

How aboutplans for a screen where we can see who is watching us in particular?