Dancer Archive
Thread: Future of the Dancer Profession? Your thoughts..
Before SWG came out I was ready to stop playing online games period, one of the main reasons was the combat peoples attitude. I find PvP, having the best pet, killing the biggest monster,finding the most uber loot pretty much a waste of time. When I did try to do PvP it always ended up with me bored and trying to talk to my opponent, well that got me killed quickly enough.
When I came to SWG and started dancing I found myself surrounded by likeminded people and we had loads of fun dancing and having fun with the customers that came in to be healed. And I loved it, but more and more that same attitude of the combatantshave started coming into the cantina, the talk of dancer bots makes my toes curl up!
I can't help but wonder, howcome the customers we had back then isn't missing coming into there favorite cantina, finding there favorite dancer, sitting down close to them and having a good time? A chat and a laugh, then be able to go out and get more BF after having a good time in the cantina.
Maybe I am rambeling, I am good at that lately. But the future for my beloved profession does look extremely dim to me and it makes me so sad. I can only hope and wish that something will be done about it, but I too belive it might be too late.
I agree with the whole afkers and holobots suck and all that. But no matter what profession you are in, you will always find someone that bugs the heck out of you. There are bad sides to every single profession, you just have to try to change your attitude about it, I guess. Or move on to another profession if that's what you feel you need to do.
For me personally, I have wanted to be a dancer almost a year before the game came out. From day one I danced my lekku off and finally, a couple months later received my Master title. A lot of people along the way that made my profession fun, and a lot that drove me insane. Those people usually move on. I made myself known in the cantina I started dancing in, and eventually joined a guild who is now part of a player city. Guess what? I got to drop the cantina in that city! Dream come true! Will I ever drop Master Dancer? Not on your life! I don't care that some of the flourishes suck, I don't care that the cantina isn't full 24/7, I don't care if some people don't want my buffs,Iignore the idiot afkers! I'm lucky enough to have a lot of support for entertainers in the city I'm in, I know a lot of people don't have that. But I worked my butt off to get to where I am, and am quite happy with what I have accomplished. It is sad to see what is going on in cities like Theed. It's gone from bad to worse. But there's a reason why I never danced in large cities like that.
Who knows what changes the dev's will have for us, good or bad. What I would hate to see is you guys, the original dancers in the galaxy, one by one drop off and leave me all alone! 
Coming to the boards and reading posts from all the ones that started dancing back in the day...that's what makes me stoked. Yeah, things have changed and that kinda sucks. But we can always remember what it was like, and we can all try to stick together. Try to teach the noobs what dancing is really all about! I hope things get better for you guys that have pretty much had it. I would really hate to see you go!
>1. AFK dancers/holo grinders
Sooner or later the DEVs will notice that unattended gameplay is unfair. They already know, they banished it for 3rd party software. They will notice that there is no difference in the level of unfairness if I do it by external application or in-game macro. The effects are the same. Other professions are already starting to recognize this, I saw some posts to the extend of "Dancers afking are fine, but I actually saw one of MY profession afkmacroing. Thats so unfair, we need to remove this !!!111". At some time in the future, unattended gameplay will be illegal. Or SWG will become the largest "robot wars" game in history.
>2. spices and food that have the same abilities to buff the mind pools
Not as good and not as durable. Also, it's not us or them. People will want to use us AND them.
>3. people migrating stats all to mind and just using doctor buffs
Those people will be "pwned" by those with mind buffs on top. Again it's not us OR them, but us AND them.
>4. time it takes to buff the mind
That indeed is a nuisance. Half the time would be nice.
this post makes me sad but let me try to put some hope into you all...
on ahazi we started a cantina revival tour! Let me tell you the responce has been overwelming and you know what? its fun to be an entertainer again... all the audiences are like "wow a live band of masters?!?!?!?!" they stay a little longer... the chat a little more and some are evens starting to follow us around... I am not a master dancer just an entertainer and master musician but i can tell you what ... its obvious you love it like i love music and so i say to you TAKE BACK YOUR CANTINA FROM THE AFK'RS thats right its yours not theirs... do whatever it takes to retrain the player base and you know what? you can and you will... after just one week we are seeing the results so trust me it is working you can do this on your server...
will it fix everything? ...no but it will at least get the game more like we like till soe fixes the profession i know on the ahazi boards that more and more people are posting that they miss the cantina's and they are the pvp pve and all other fighting types so im sure they will fix it for us just do what you can for now to make the game better for yourself and keep hope 
but mostly create constant awareness... keep posting tell ppl in game hell send the dev's emails about it till they ban you from here do what ever it takes
I agree with Pickle's assessment word-for-word. It's a problem that could've been corrected in the game's infancy, but there are now too many people who consider unattended gameplay to be a "feature;" the removal of said feature would be a perceived nerf. I think the ship has sailed and left the intended Socializer segment behind on the dock.
On a side note, I was recently shopping around for a game to replace the macro-laden SWG and stumbled across "Horizons." Apparently, theyalready have an unattended gameplay problem resulting from their in-game macro system, and the game is less than a month old. Perhaps fully-automated games are the real "second generation" of MMOs. It certainly seems to be leaning in that direction. It may be time to go back to MUDs and MUSHes. Disappointment is the only word I can come up with for the current state of affairs in the entertainer professions, and I think the word will be even more applicable in the future.
First, to Pickles: I found a profession I enjoyed. I chose Dancer my first day in SWG, and had a great time...for a while. But, sorry to say, for your average person, the profession becomes boring. You can argue all you want about how great it is, but face it...there is absolutely nothing that changes from basic to exotic 4, except the way your toon moves. And watching THAT gets old after a while, especially when there are only a handful of flourishes for most dances.
And to Tiaga: Sorry, but your analogies don't hold up for the vast majority of people. All the cantinas look the same, so there's not much point in going to different ones to dance in, especially since you are restricted in the amount of XP you gain if you're not grouped. Yes, you can do different dances, and the novelty wears off after about the tenth time of seeing the same 5 flourishes for that new dance you just picked up, and knowing that you only have to do 3000 repititions of the same button pushing that you've just done. And what new places to perform? Jabba's Palace? Oh wait, it doesn't act as a cantina, so you're stuck dancing by yourself (for lowered XP) and not able to heal anyone.
You folks need to realize that AFKing is the symptom, not the problem. Until you cure the problem, you're stuck with it. For those of you who have stuck with Dancing and still love every minute of it, great! That shows dedication. But you need to recognize that not everyone shares, or wants to share, your dedication. If you got rid of AFKing, what you would find are people stuck in the cantinas, complaining endlessly about how much dancing sucks. People will always be trying to master dancer, because of the holocrons and the Force Sensitive slot. That's the reality of it.
And yes, I realize there were AFKers before the holocrons. That is because some people want to master a profession as quickly as they can. You're never going to stop those people either.
So you have a choice. You can continue to complain about AFKing and try to get it removed from the game, and make the cantina's that much worse. Or you can start focusing on the problems that leads to AFKing and try to improve your profession. Sadly, after spending 6 months on this message board, it's pretty clear what most of your priorities are.
But, people like to "finish." They don't like feeling they are "quitters." They set goals for themselves and try to attain them. Start dancing, the goal is to eventually become Master. Get partway there and find it boring. If you only have the choice of being bored or quitting, many would quit. But because there is a 3rd choice (AFKing your way to master) you can complete the goal without a hassle or boredom, so you do it. That is the problem.
If they took that out of the game, most people (again, barring holos) who didn't like the profession would just give up, leaving it to the people who really like socialzing and entertaining anyway -- which is who the profession was designed for in the first place.
C
I'll tell you what I think about our future honestly.
Holocrons are killing the cantina's... yes its true but they are doing the same thing to every other profession. This isn't a Dancer problem, its a game wide problem and its the Developers fault for coming up with such a stupid system to unlock the FS slots. They aren't going to remove the macro ability now, even if they wanted to before, now that the entire game is using it there's no chance in hell they're going to take away the one thing that makes this stupidpath to FS tolerable. Does this suck? Hell yeah it does, its tearing the game apart in my opinion.
I don't know about the rest of you but my PA is almost nothing but players playing classes they don't want to play doing things they don't want to do. Finding a reliable person to make something is a joke, all anyone wants to do is grind grind grind, Master, Drop and on to the next profession. This is not good for the game at all, its eating the soul out of it.
However.. the good news is that with Holocrons suddenly becoming as common as bird droppings... we are at the worst part of it right now. People are starting to unlock the FS slot by the dozens almost every day, it won't be long til most of the holo grinders have theirs unlocked as well. Once everyone has their stupid FS slot, gets to try Jedi, realizes it wasn't worth the trouble, they'll either quit or they'll go back to playing the profession they enjoy. Only then will things start to get back to normal and only then will the devs even consider nerfing the macro system. Thats just the sad truth the way I see it, but that time will come.
As far as our profession goes.. heres what I see in the months to come. Perhaps I'm saying more then I should but I want to be honest. I see our Buffs being able to be used on ourselves, I see the buffing system made simple and less time consuming. I see ways to keep track of our buffs and who we're healing. I see new flourishes coming to finish the dances that are missing them and I see new dances coming with the expansion later on this year. I see our missions finally becoming something worth doing and actually being a fun part of the game. I see group commands coming that will make performing as a group and putting on a good show easier and make things possible we can't even do now. I see an ability to track who is watching you. I see improvements made to the /deny service function. I see the rate of our falls becoming something we can tolerate and a bonus in some way for pulling off our movements with perfection. I see the glitchy problems with some of our dances being worked out finally. And I see our stupid titles name getting fixed.
Are these promises made by the Devs? No, absolutely not in most cases. However these are all issues that have been discussed and I would bet money on will be in the game come this time next year. This is coming just from me guys and gals, I have to make that clear so the devs don't kill me. Our dev is finally able to turn his attention back towards the professions.. there are improvements coming for us as I speak, things you'll see as soon as the next patch and we'll probably see more with each one after. Its going to be a long process but I honestly believe it will all happen. Again, this is just from me everyone.
I'm not trying to string you all along.. but I don't believe our future is completely dark either. I do see a light at the end of the tunnel even if that tunnelis a very long one. To those of you who are holding out hope that they'll turn our profession into something more field useful, beyond our buffs being improved and used on ourselves your barking up the wrong tree imo. I don't think it will happen, I've seen no signs or mention of anything to make me think it will. BF will probably always be cantina only, we'll probably never get combat skills, but again, this is just my opinion folks. This is a profession thats about entertaining, I see many tools and improvements coming our way in the next year to make us better at it and to make doing it more enjoyable.
The AFK issue is here for a while, It probably won't get better for a few months until the holocron craze dies down. Deal with it as best you can, try another profession in the mean time if you want, its up to you. If you enjoy entertaining people and socializing tho, then be ready to come back because things will improve.
This post is already long winded so I'll end it now. The game may be in a dark phase right now.. but there is hope. (Sort of Ironic if you consider the time period this game is taking place in. Or would that just be a funny coincidence? )
Message Edited by Ravenmist on 01-06-2004 11:39 AM
This profession wasn't made for the average person, it was made for the socializers. I'm not saying I don't want new dances and other content, because I do. What I am saying is that, for me, this profession does not get boring because I play it to meet and interact with people, and there are new faces every day in the cantina, new and interesting people to meet and play with, and as each person is unique, it never ever gets old or boring. I'm not here because exotic is cool or because I want to run dancer missions. If you are, well then I can completely understand why you're bored.
Of course, now I'm bored too because the cantinas are filled with brainless automatons and there's noone to meet, so I'll lift a glass along side ya because even though we're pissed off for different reasons, misery loves company.
- J
The way they have implemented this, IMO, they should've just let everyone be a Jedi. Everyone who really wants one is going to get one now anyway. It's just so stupid I can't understand how anyone would ever have thought this was a good idea.
C
I couldn't agree more Chessack, and remember when I said soon I was talking in a term of at least a couple months still.
Chessack wrote:
Ravenmist, I hope you're right that the hologrinding will end soon and everyone who wants a Force slot will have it. Personally I think the holocrons are the stupidest thing to happen in this game.
The way they have implemented this, IMO, they should've just let everyone be a Jedi. Everyone who really wants one is going to get one now anyway. It's just so stupid I can't understand how anyone would ever have thought this was a good idea.
C
I want it to be over as much as anyone, luckily you only need to unlock it once tho and most people are well on their way to doing so. They have to finish eventually and with macro's and such it shouldn't take the majority longer then a few months to finish. Its part of the reason I've changed my attitude and am doing anything I can to help them. I just want it over with...
YoursTruly wrote:
((Ravenmist, I don't mean this to sound bad, but you said on that list that those aren't things the developers promised you. Do you have a time frame yet to tell us what they *did* promise us, and when they might deliver? At the current rate, I'm not going to stay with this very long at all, much less a year like you mention. I'm lonely, and I am feeling like my profession is worthless. I asked if there was a performing troupe on my server forum, and if there is any use for a master dancer, and was made fun of. (It keeps it bumped, at least. *pshrug*)
Our buffs are much less useful and in demand than a doctor's, and take so long that even my friends don't wait for me to buff them, much less get many requests and tips from strangers. I can't help but wonder with the new combat system, and the pools regenerating even faster from being used, that our buffs are going to become even less used.
I don't mean any disrespect, and I will be quiet now because I am feeling bleah about all this, but it isn't very encouraging to hear that things might be better a year from now after the holocron craze dies down. It is hard to think of reasons to keep playing and paying for a game that might start being fun again a year from now.
Thank you for your comments and your help, Ravenmist. Your honesty and straightforward speaking are appreciated.))
You have to understand that I have to be careful how I say things. I want you to know that I think a lot of good things will be coming our way, but I can't say it like the Devs are promising it because they haven't said I could and in most cases there are no promises yet. I can tell you what I think will happen however, and with the information I have I can make pretty safe bets so to speak. Its my personal opinion that these things I listed will be coming in the months to come and that most will probably be finished within the year. Yes that is a long time but like I said, improvements will be coming all along the way starting with this next patch.
I can't tell you how long each item will take because I honestly don't know for sure. Even what the devs tell me tend to be subject to change depending on what happens. I don't think the game will be worth much period tho until the holo craze has worn off and thats at least 2 months away in my opinion.
Like I said, if you can't take it anymore and don't want to keep waiting, try something else for now but keep an eye out over here because things will improve. The holo craze will end, we'll get lots of great new things and fixes and we'll be dancing the night away and loving every minute of it again.
I hope this helps, I try to be as honest and straight forward as I can with you all but there are limitations on what I can say and do. I don't think any of you want me to go to far and loose my job either since for some reason you people seem to think I do okay at it.