Dancer Archive

Phew wow 16 posts already. I asked for a place to posts ideas that would make it easier for us to play our social role and I got it. Good work everyone.

Well first I’ll start by explaining the Social Event Terminals. I quickly put that one out but during the day the whole thing started to take shape.

These terminals would server to get your events advertised and to put out social information in your galaxy. The social information part would be purely for fun and would only be a place for “qualified” entertainers to get creative.

One very important factor here is the qualifications to be able to start using the terminal as a tool. If this is easily available to everyone, it will get polluted with sellers advertisement, griefers just posting nonsense. Many non-entertainment and non-social content crowding the content this item would be created for. This is why it is important to calculate just when this item becomes available.

A note on ID. I’m not forgetting them. I’ve noticed usually people seek out the ID and something like this would not be needed for them as a tool.

So far I’ve thought of it as a completely new profession. This would be just like the merchant profession but for entertainers. The difference here is the ease of attaining this publishing profession.

To have one vendor in your home you only need three boxes of artisan. That is fine and not impossible to reach if you truly need a vendor. To be allowed to place your first advertisement on the terminal you need novice publicist.

Here is where this new profession has the potential to fix so many things. To attain Novice publicist you need either the dancer or musician branch and also the entertainer item use branch. It just so happens this branch has the perfect name since this will be an “item” you will use as an entertainer.

Instead of needing the item use branch for dancer or musician it would now only be needed for publicist. Players could now choose to just be dancers and have another profession on the side or choose to be full out socialites. Instead of feeling held back by the dancer or musician profession needing only one branch would make this feel like an enhancement to your game play. Needing either the dancer or musician branch to be publicist would give the two professions an importance. It also would guarantee that you can somewhat put on a show before you make an event.

Before going into details about the different features of this profession I’ll post a suggested profession template.

Master Publicist: City Registration, Temporary building ownership, City Sign, Appointment book (craft)

Promotional Tools IV Building Management IV Hiring IVPublishing IV
Party Effects IITemporary props II Accounting II Images

Promotional Tools III Building Management III Hiring III Publishing III
Party Effects I Temporary props I NPC Hiring Color

Promotional Tools IIBuilding Management II Hiring II Publishing II
Pyrotechnics II Signs II Player Wages Article Embellishments

Promotional Tools IBuilding Management I Hiring I Publishing I
Pyrotechnics ISigns I Accounting IEvent Terminals

Throughout the whole template I have made sure that none of these skills are needed to enjoy the entertainer profession. I have also made sure to use present game content as much as possible to make this as easy as possible to implement. There is really no sense in reinventing and redesigning. The game has so much content already and this will be a way to actually make some of it useful.

Promotional Tools: Ever notice not many use the fireworks anymore. I’ve been a Master Artisan and have really had no real use for them. I’ve crafted them once for fun and then that was it. Why not give this item to the Publicist to craft. Who better to set up some fantastic fireworks shows than someone who enjoys social professions. They now will also have something to sell to other entertainers that decided to not choose the publicist profession.

Party effects is where new game content would have to be added in. Again an item that is crafted and a way for the publicist to make some credits. These items would be similar to holo emotes. Player activated visual effects. For example launching balloons, throwing confetti, launching doves, bubbles (more than the holo emote for champagne). These would be wanted items not only by the entertainers without the publicist profession but by other players attending the events.

Building Management: A sign that lights during an event. Of course Sign II would have a more colorful sign and extra lighting effect. To activate the sign a fee is charged and the sign works for a certain amount of time. The sign unlit is permanent, you either activate or not it’s all up to you as a publicist.

Temporary props would work in the same way. These would be items put in your inventory only useable by their creator and non tradable. The item works on a timer as the house sign does. It would be nice for it to not count as an item in the house, but if that is impossible or to hard to design I’m sure players can take away a bag of resources and put that in the bank or plan ahead to make room for the decorations. The decorations / props are placed as regular items are. It’s all up to you to arrange them in an attractive way. Some examples of items would be a flower archway for weddings, a Christmas tree, garlands, a disco ball, etc. Level II of that is obviously bigger better props.

Hiring: You can ask people to join you in your event, you can charge players at the door with a fee and you can pay the people who came to help you at your event without this skill. What this skill mainly does is makes it easy and more efficient for you to manage all this.

Accounting I is just a simple list of players who contribute to your event. A place to put in if they paid credits, notes on what they donated. Really only a notebook with some useful functionality but still not quite fully automated.

Player wages works with your starter accounting book. You now have the ability to put in a wage to be paid out to players who participate. Again still not fully automated. You have to confirm the payment of this wage via a send button that has the same effect as a bank transfer. It’s up to you to make sure the player did do the work.

NPC hiring: Purely for looks and has no function other than to look good or interesting, shout if you choose, or be animated. If you choose to place them at the door to make it seem like you actually have a bouncer that is completely up to you. You can dress this bouncer in uniform, type in a please behave and these are the rules statement, tell the bouncer to perform a bouncer type action with hands crossed for example. As normal if you have an entrance fee on your home the typical message will appear. There is of course a fee for the npcs similar to the vendor but not as expensive since you can not place items on them. You can choose to have them active for as long as you are willing to pay the fee.

Accounting II: This is when you can make use of an employee terminal. This item will be craftable only by architects. Figured might as well put in something here that needs the help of another profession since all other professions seem to have a little bit of that. This item can only be placed in a player owned building and only place by a player with this skill. If you are hired to perform at a certain time and place you must go to the terminal and register that you are at the event. When the event is over you have one hour to punch out. The owner of the terminal will have the ability to fire the employee if work is not performed and only payment up to that time will be paid. This will prevent people from taking a contract, going afk and come back a few hours later to collect payment. Since this is in a player building you will also have the ability to eject this afk player from your building. This item if possible could work in connection with the accounting book. By clicking on send to employee terminal and only when near the terminal that employees information is downloaded. The accounting book would still be needed for on the road when you’re gathering all players. The terminal is mainly a tool to make all participants comfortable about taking their time to participate at an event. It’s also a pretty cool thing to have for role play.

Publishing: This is where this whole profession stemmed from. I started with a simple news terminal and now I’ve just created a whole new profession. This line is pretty self explanatory. You start with plain text, then you can add non standard characters, then comes colored text and finally icons and pre-selected pictures. I won’t get into the layout but it would basically be similar to the bazaar. You see a title, it’s either plain, with a small star, in colour or with a small icon and in colour. You click this title and it takes you to a tabloid style article. Depending on your level this article will look plain or full of embellishments.
There will be a button for adding a waypoint to your datapad and an option to also add an alarm for this event.

Master Publicist:

City Registration, Temporary building ownership and City Sign: I don’t like that skill title at all because this really is nothing like that /register function we have. If anyone can find a better title please let me know. This would permit you Master Publicist to put up an announcement that there is an event in the city. The best way for this would be when you get within the city and it would appear below the system message where it says you have entered the city of….. Such and such event now playing at such and such location. The message would only last for the duration of the temporary building ownership. By all entrances to this building a sign of choice like the ones available in building management sings can be placed. The timer runs out, the building reverts to being city owned, the city entry message is taken out and so is the door sign and any temporary props that may have been added. For these events the employee terminal will not be available since it needs to be placed in a permanent location and may cause problems with it’s functionality as in missed payments, loss of the object itself.

Appointment book crafted object: Finally we have the much wanted object. The appointment book. A calendar, day timer type book with it’s sole purpose to be used as an event organization tool. Just something to put notes in to make sure you’re not late or don’t miss an event. A place to put in birthdays, wedding dates and such. This item would be available to any player in any profession but would only be craftable by the master publicist. This item can be tweaked into something high-tech even. Equipped with an infrared port you can download to another players appointment book the information you choose…… Ooooooohh oh boy that’s a whole new thread there. The appointment book and possible add-ons a player can install in it.

Well I think that should be enough for this post heh. So there you have it. A whole new profession completely geared towards improving game play for the social player, so that they can in turn make the game more socially fun for others.

If there is anything here that doesn’t quite add up please let me know. Most of this stuff I just thought of as I was writing it.

Shazam of Kauri