Dancer Archive
Thread: Combat Balance Issues for Dancer: Ent Healing, Bards, and our Future in the Game
What if entertainers, or another class could the combat types a temporary reprive from fatigue? Not healing, just a reduction to your BF for a certain length of time before it come back, maybe even using that ability would give the target say 10% more fatigue back once it wears off. Those entertainers who want to go into the field can and have an ability which, although not vital, would be useful. This wouldn't take away healing xp from entertainers in the cantinas, actually I'd see this as boosting it.
Those who want to use the ability could do so, those who don't, don't have to, combat players can spend longer in the field at a time but will still require healing at a cantina at some point, entertainers in cantinas will still play a vital role and may even get more healing xp out of it.
Whats not to like?
Message Edited by Elhana on 05-03-2004 02:07 PM
I really don't think that blue healing is such a core dancer issue as it has become.
Rather, blue healing has come to the forefront due to combat system loopholes that have turned the whole tide of battle into a mind attack war, rather than something more balanced as it should be. All of the dev comments that I've seen regarding this seem to support that view, though I admit I have not researched this in depth. The reason it has come to our doorsteps in such depth is that we are currentlythe primary blue bar healers, and the combat system is unbalanced to favor mind attack warfare. If this combat balance is corrected, you'll see the "need" for battlefield dancers diminish immediately.
From everything that I've read regarding the entertainer professions, and the intent behind their inclusion in SWG, we were always supposed to be asocially driven professions,and not designed to be just anotherbattlefield combatsupport role.Ours are amongst the experiment - to expand the game experience beyond just battle.We are a part of the attempt to create a gaming environment that is not just weapons and killing the beasties, or each other. I believe, based on everything that I've read from the development teams, that our roles by design are to enrich the gameplay environment, to bring this world to life, and to add some depth to the experience and immersion in the Star Wars milieu. This is not to say that the entertainer professions cannot "cross the line" into some measure of battlefield support. But I do not think it must be hard-wired into our profession's skills, or core direction. As I've stated before, any entertainer who wants to provide battlefield support can do so by using some of the skill points beyond those needed for entertaining to take a combat profession.
Arguing until we're blue in the face about the "needs" of blue healing is in my honest opinion a moot point. The devs have stated that combat is not supposed to be so heavily weighted towards the blue bars. This is so obviously a problem with the combat system, and not a problem of dancers not having enough battlefield capabilities. For all the screaming going on here, I really think the whole issue will clean itself up with a forthcoming combat rebalance in which blue attacks will not be as prominent. And all these arguments about dancers on the battlefieldwill fizzle into obscurity, as they are not the true issue.
Then, perhaps, we can get back to screaming about why we can't start our dance group all together, and why we don't have all of our flourishes, and so on and so on... 
We have a tendency to think of our characters in terms of our dancing, because it may take up to 106 skill points to have our dancing skills, if we pursue it to mastery. However, we also have to realize that we have 144 other skill points that can be used for other things. Just because we are a dancer does not mean we are "gimped" by any means any more so than let's say the master Armoursmith or the master Droid Engineer.
And we tend also to think that our skills make us a social profession. However, recent experience has shown us that we need not be social at all to do our basic functions. Social interaction is but merely one method of doing what we do for other players, but its certainly not required, nor can it be. There are other methods too, such as merely allow the macro system to give out the things we give, social interaction notwithstanding.
And another more subtle difference we have with lets say, doctors, is that we do NOT give buffs and healing to people. While this may sound strange, its true. No amount of effort we do can make battle fatiuge go down or enhance the mind unless a patron makes the effort to watch us. We do not heal BF for a player, players heal BF themselves by watching us.
Now there are many that may not feel that the game experience is as rich as some other class, such as weaponsmith. Because as a weaponsmith, one needs to interact with the game on several fronts: be it with maitenance on factories and harvestors, researching and purchasing the best materials, experimenting with different schematics, and putting the goods up for sale. We have only the venue, and moreover, most of what we do is simply out of our hands. But increasing the amount of venues, such as camps, won't solve our content problems any more. It will simply give us our same basic things without making the actual things we do any more rich than they are now. We have problems with the distribution of entertainers in the NPC and player city venues now, let alone the potential to create a venue at will anywhere on the ten worlds. Increasing the potency of our in game functions to date will not solve the problems either, because it will simply be the same thing using the same old methods to distribute it.
And I do not feel that creating new professions and calling them "dancers of a different sort" are the solution either. It will simply leave our profession with the same attendent difficulties as we have them now in favor of a seperate class who's purpose is yet to be defined or justified.
But maybe we need to think outside our current role into areas not yet explored. The Chef redesign really opened my mind to this. For example, why really must entertainment deal with ONLY BF, Mind Wounds, and Buffs? Is there any rule which says that we cannot enhance other things as well, like combat bonuses, or other stats like dodge or experimentation bonuses? Because you see, SEA tapes are permanent alterations to a template, but they are expensive. However, an armoursmith may not need +10 ALL the time, but maybe only a short time to create a schematic. Maybe a combat character does not need +10ALL the time, but only for a short span of time. Of course, how does one make the performance watched possess these different qualities? THE DANCE ITSELF! Just a thought I am currently pondering.
Panthu wrote:
When we ask about Dance tools and Props and Performance Enhancements, we get a little pat on the head and told to be patient. When the Dancer Corre says "slow buffs are taking two minutes longer", she's told Social players won't mind and the "buff machines" can still do the fast method for higher costs. Oh? Well, I don't mind hosting a Tea Party instead of bringing up real issues like the other Corres do... but let's make sure we all understand what this attitude has gotten us so far.
The game is about to go through some major changes, if we are to sit by and be pretty, well, we do that better than anyone else.
If however we want to have an active tie to the heal cycle, now is the time to say so.
Panthu, I love you and send you my hugs everytime you go to bat for us, but let's look at the problem realistically here.
You're right, we're being ignored. That much is obvious. But the blame can't be solely placed on our passive behavior. If anything, our behavior is a result of the bigger problem. We get NO active response from anyone here on our boards.
On my guild forums, a DE was making a comment about TH's lame answers to their questions, the way he fluffs off their questions. I had to stop for a moment and think about that, then responded to him asking him to take a look at the dancer boards and see how TH responds to our issues. He doesn't.
Ever since Holo left, there has been little to no dev posts here. Not even a "We're looking into it" post. And guess what? We've gotten used to it. We now expect to NOT get answered. Heck, the only answer we've gotten recently is the 19 Weekly answers, probably only because it would be too obvious if we were left out.
So Panthu, what you might want to do is ask TH to just spend 5 mins posting something here. Anything! Sports statistics, what he had for breakfast, anything!
I'm sorry. I'm usually the "give the devs the benefit of the doubt" person, but lately it's been getting hard.
So, I write this post in response to your just sit by comment. I just can't do it anymore. Thanks for lighting the fire
PoetDancer wrote:
.
But maybe we need to think outside our current role into areas not yet explored. The Chef redesign really opened my mind to this. For example, why really must entertainment deal with ONLY BF, Mind Wounds, and Buffs? Is there any rule which says that we cannot enhance other things as well, like combat bonuses, or other stats like dodge or experimentation bonuses? Because you see, SEA tapes are permanent alterations to a template, but they are expensive. However, an armoursmith may not need +10 ALL the time, but maybe only a short time to create a schematic. Maybe a combat character does not need +10ALL the time, but only for a short span of time. Of course, how does one make the performance watched possess these different qualities? THE DANCE ITSELF! Just a thought I am currently pondering.
I really really really think this is a terrible thing to do to the dancer community... It just further divides the community and does nothing to address the core problems with our profession.
- Pay scale for our missions based on group size and dancer level like the combat system.
- Mission content that is engaging and fun for solo playerand group alike.
- A more interactive dance system that engages the solo player and group alike and which makes playing AFK nearly impossible.
- Better system to gain experience from that is more engaging and rewarding.
- Healing and buffing system need to be rethought in terms of speed and control by the entertainer.
- More bobbles for the dancer. Items, venues and skill enhancements.
Before I give credence to this post, I would like to ask a few questions:
(1) If this is not your agenda, Panthu, why do you keep pushing for a "combat-dancer"? Are you trying to insinuate that this interest is coming from the Devs?
(2) Exactly what do you mean by "The time to talk about it is now, not four months down the road when we are crying because the Cantinas are empty and we have no one to watch us." Are you suggesting that there are changes in the wind that is going to take away our role in the game? Could you link us or give us more information on "Our role as Healers is being threatened by the CB. " If I recall correctly, this has to do with healing the "white" damage of the mind and not black wound or battle fatique, which has been our traditionally role.
(3) You state yourself "So I thought, "They sound like Squad Leaders to me, why would Holo be opposed to these things in the game? "" I think you are absolutely right on this observation. Why should we compete with SL for their role in the game? How do you think making these changes to our class will offer a companionable role with the SL role?
kirah_ashlin wrote:
Panthu, last night all the PvE players were complaining about increased BF and the entertainers in our cantina were noticing a rise in the amount of healing xp they were receiving. Now, this may be addressed in another thread (haven't gone into the main forum yet), but was this a change or a bug? If not a bug, do you have any insight to this change and how it might affectthese concerns?
I hope it was a change. When I was a newbie dancer last July, healing exp was much, much easier to come by. I had occasion to take up musican recently (different character), and the *only* times I ever got any significant healing xp was when the group hired a combat medic to come and mind disease people.
PoetDancer wrote:
But maybe we need to think outside our current role into areas not yet explored. The Chef redesign really opened my mind to this. For example, why really must entertainment deal with ONLY BF, Mind Wounds, and Buffs? Is there any rule which says that we cannot enhance other things as well, like combat bonuses, or other stats like dodge or experimentation bonuses? Because you see, SEA tapes are permanent alterations to a template, but they are expensive. However, an armoursmith may not need +10 ALL the time, but maybe only a short time to create a schematic. Maybe a combat character does not need +10ALL the time, but only for a short span of time. Of course, how does one make the performance watched possess these different qualities? THE DANCE ITSELF! Just a thought I am currently pondering.
Ahhh...now that is intriguing. So maybe five minutes of poplock could grant a dodge bonus, or five minutes of popular2 could grant a harvesting bonus, etc., etc. What a nifty idea!
Let me add this. My in-game husband is a master armorsmith. When he is working on a new run of armor and creating his factory schematics, he always drinks brandy AND he always asks me to give him a mind buff first. Now, apart from the fact that he loves to watch me dance , he says that having the highest mind pool possible gives him greater success in crafting. Meaning he gets more "amazing" and "great" successful experimentation results. He swears by this. Our former guild leader, a master architect, told him about the mind/success relationship. So apparently there are at least a few players out there who know this secret.
Perhaps they could expand this to include actual +experimentation bonuses in our buffs.
Hmm... I must confess I had always assumed everyone was speaking about wounds and BF when talking about "blue healing". We can't heal mind damage as far as I know.
In that vein, making mind damage (but not mind wounds) being healable without the drawbacks current CM mind damage healing has (lots of mindwounds) will not have much of an impact on our healing abilities. I can foresee a hit on our buffing business though, if healing one's own mind will get easy, since many hunters will probably not bother that much with getting a mind buff anymore.
One must also consider that a squadleader coupled with a TKM can already heal mind wounds in battle by spreading them equally among the group and then meditate them down, lather rinse repeat. (Caveat: I have not much experience about SLs, so never tested this myself, it sounds like it works though).
What will impact drastically on our business, and on the cantina scene in general would be a way to heal BF. I am not even sure if allowing entertainers to heal BF in camps will not be bad for our profession as a whole, since it would result in less people visiting the cantina out of sheer convenience. Sure, the grumpy "I want no downtime, kill kill kill now" types who hate sitting in a cantina we could do without, but we might lose some of the nicer, bigger part of the combat characters who visit the cantina because they need to, but once there, like it and interact with us. Those people could visit the cantina less often if they could, after a hunt or raid, heal BF together with the impatient ones in a camp with a bot. Convenience would often win over the desire to visit a cantina in that case.
Battle fatigue drastically reducing buff values would be very, very nice. Not from a entertainer's point of view, buffing makes most of my money, but from general game play issues - buffs ruin this game, causing armor to have no drawbacks, and making all PvE content laughably easy. Anything that reduces the impact of buffs is a good thing. That way, unbuffed characters would not be hurt much by BF, as it is now, and buffed characters would be hit harder, equalling them a bit (if not very much).
The idea of buffing things other than Mind pool is interesting and certainly something that could be split with musicians (i.e., we buff melee and range defense and they buff block, dodge, and counter-attack - or whatever that other one is called; we buff melee attack and they buff ranged attack; etc.) Not sure if something this drastic would require a restructure of our "skill onion" or not.
It couldn't hurt to take a more aggressive stance with the devs. As much as many of us would like to be purely social players, we need some reason for people to come to Cantinas to see us. For most people that will only occur if there is some substantial (read: numerical) advantage to doing so. I believe I read somewhere that the original idea for the cantinas was for them to be the social center of the galaxy. To ensure that, we need to have a product that will cause "munchkin_01" to want to visit us.