Dancer Archive
Thread: Your #1 issue?
Chessack wrote:
Yup. I agree with this 100%. Both issues are up there but falling is much more important because I cannot control it in any way. At least LAMErs I can control to a degree -- if they start doing it and I am group leader I can boot 'em. If not I can leave the group and, if necessary, the venue. There are a few cantinas where this seems to be done and others where it doesn't... I can just go to the ones where it isn't done.
But falling, there is nothing I can do about. I can't wear better clothes that don't tangle me up as much to decrease falling. I can't drop back to an "easier" dance to decrease falling. I can't learn a "falling prevention" skill to decrease the falling rate.
Yes, the falling bothers me more than AFKers. Also, AFKers kind of fall under a much larger umbrella than dancer issues. We are just impacted more than others.
I thought I read that falling only happens if you are doing a dance at your maximum level. I rarely dance a lower style, so I cannot verify this. I mean, I haven't seen myself fall during rhythmic or footloose lately, but I haven't done them too much.
But your statement indicates that it doesn't matter what skill you are. A Master Dancer can still fall on Basic as well as the higher-level dances. This is a problem.
Kuildeous wrote:I thought I read that falling only happens if you are doing a dance at your maximum level. I rarely dance a lower style, so I cannot verify this. I mean, I haven't seen myself fall during rhythmic or footloose lately, but I haven't done them too much.
But your statement indicates that it doesn't matter what skill you are. A Master Dancer can still fall on Basic as well as the higher-level dances. This is a problem.
Yep, you can still fall on the lower dances. I am up Popular 2 and I still fall in Formal.
C
I have to many to just list one SO....
Cirroco's
TOP EIGHT PET PEEVES
#8. People who think our only purpose is to serve. Wake up dip stick, we're spending our hours dancing for you and healing you're fatigue, you keep tellin us that if we want credits we shoulf go do missions like everyone else then you're going to soon find that we'll take your advice, then when you really need us we'll all be out doing missions and you'll have no one around to heal you. You want us to spend out time on you? Then stop treating us like garbage.
#7. People who think anyone who dances is gay, be they male or female. I only know one person that is, other than that all the other dancers I know are straight, enought with the gay jokes.
#6. Entire groups of combat players who come into a Cantina, demand that you dance for them since you're the only entertainer in town and then leave without a thank your or even a 12 cred tip.
#5. Entertainers who spam "Please tip your musicians and Dancers" messages on a macro. I have no qualms with people asking for tips but you don't need to ask every 5 minutes.
#4. Imbecilic morons who think that because they give us exp they shouldn't have to tip us.
News flash, I've gotten all my healing skills already, I don't need you to earn exp, but you need me to survive stop being a penny pincher, you're a marksman liklihood is you have a good 75K in your bank.
#3. Idiots who think we're medics and can heal action and health wounds along with mind and BF. I've had this happen to me 6 times. Some moron will ask for healing and when I say all I can heal is mind and BF he gets pissed, yells at me and walks off.
#2. AFK Macro dancers. If they're not willing to do the work then they shouldn't be in the profession, put a ban on it, make CSRs hunt them down or something.
#1. Falling. I've fallen MORE AND MORE since I made Enthraller, I'm nearly a master dancer I shouldn't be hardly ever fallign I've neverseen aprofessional dancer in real life fall EVER.Falling doesn't even have apoint it it, either remove it or make it a 1-1,000 chance that you might fall.
AFKers - I'm not sure what SOE can do about this that won't also interfere with us entertaining our audiences. I personally don't want to have to click a box away every 2 minutes just to reassure the server that I'm at my keyboard.
I think the AFK issue, tip spam, and many other issues could be resolved if Dancers could proactively target audience members for buffs. As long as we're nothing more than dumb bots standing in the middle of the floor that anyone can /watch as they please, we will have no respect -- and no self-respect either.
Give us a way to buff our customers beyond the stealth Mind buff they sneaked in a few patches ago. Or make the Mind buff something we have to consciously do with a slash command, and many ills will be cured.
I have a question to throw out because i have a different perspective on AFK macroing.
Would it bother people less if people AFK danced in the private rooms in the cantina, maybe in a more plain outfit? Or if they danced in thier own house AFK?
Basically if they are not drawing attention away from live performers would it be less intrusive in the lives of performers in general?
One quick dance question too:I just got formal 1....will it always look like i am stoned/drunk when not performing flourishes? Or is that what formal dancing is considered? It's funny, but not performance worthy when i aam staggering adn looking like I am checking for invisible walls and getting my balance back.
I think most of us are just venting. :-)
C
-Kalika- wrote:
I have a question to throw out because i have a different perspective on AFK macroing.
Would it bother people less if people AFK danced in the private rooms in the cantina, maybe in a more plain outfit? Or if they danced in thier own house AFK?
Basically if they are not drawing attention away from live performers would it be less intrusive in the lives of performers in general?
The problem there is you can't limit it to there. A lot of those people don't care about the cantina atmosphere. Some are polite yes, but it's impossible to allow the polite ones and disallow the impolite ones. And having people in the back room wouldn't solve the image problem about being lazy and being able to macro to master.
My idea for how to solve the AFK macro issue: Get rid of recursive macros. I've done something similar on a MUD type server. (Actually it was a TinuMUCK variant called FuzzBall for those who care or would know what that means) The basic concept is you can't execute a macro inside a macro. This allows things like macrod clothes/armor changes, while preventing looping macros. It still leaves plenty of rooms for long running macros, without being indefinite, and lets live performers fully utilize the macro system. Other possibilities are kicking off people who are AFK (Not flagged, but no activity) no matter what they are or aren't doing. Of course both of these can be defeated by 3rd party programs, but they would be like locks - keeping honest people honest, while the criminals will still pick the lock or smash the door/window.
I'll make another post with details about how this would work (Both technical and the pros and cons).
Oh, and formal2 solves the staggering drunk problem of formal.
Would it bother people less if people AFK danced in the private rooms in the cantina, maybe in a more plain outfit? Or if they danced in thier own house AFK?
There's still the issue of image. Entertainers are the only class in the game who can theoretically macro all the way up to Master - doesn't that cheapen the value of Master status for those of us who worked hard at it?
There's also another issue. That is the problem of "Master" dancers who are hired to work weddings or parties, paid good money, and don't know the first thing about assembling special effects, flourish sequences and costume changes into a cohesive show. Others of us have worked at perfecting visually pleasing routines and understand the nuances of the tools we're given.
The macroers? How embarrassing to be paid well to dance at a wedding and one of the other dancers, without saying a word, started doing /bandflos --- apparently not knowing that Exotic only has 2 flourishes, the entire dance troupe was suddenly shimmying like idiots instead of moving slowly and sensuously. The sure sign of someone who hasn't really worked at the craft much at all. The certain product of endless hours of macroing.
It may not seem like it has an effect at first blush, but in practice it hastoo muchnegative fallout to be benign.
I don't recall falling in any of the entertainer tree dances in quite some time, so it's entirely possible that falling is somehow lessened as you skill up with regards to lower level dances. However, that means I can do NOTHING AT ALL to lessen my fall rates on the dances that I was granted as a reward for attaining master dancer. What kind of shoddy reward is that? 'Make master dancer, we're going to give you 3 new dances that are all upgrades of things you already have. One of them won't look right to your audience, oh, and we made sure there was a special animation for falling since that was more important than getting the mo cap done for the full 8 flourishes we promised you'.
Falling needs to go, period.
The AFK thing is more an 'entertainer' issue since it's valid for both music and dance. Let's bug the entertainer guy!
Okay, I feel I should comment on a few things with this thread here. First off, a top issues thread for the next report has not been started because the next report could be another month or two away still so theres really no point. However, voicing your oppinions and concerns is never a bad thing when its constructive so have at it. 
Now,one pointI'd like to make.
The falling issue has already been addressed in the first report. It is in there, they are aware of it, and I do not plan on letting it go either so believe me, they won't be able to forget about it. I will keep pestering on that one until something is done about it.
This however does not mean you can't complain about it still. By all means gripe away, and believe me I share your frustration with that one. Just wanted to make sure you where all aware its an issue that is already in the devs faces and will remain that way.
Thats it for the moment... I may post more on this thread if anything sticks out to me or if any of you have a question.
I basically just started this thread because I don't know too many other dancers in game, as I rarely ever dance in city cantinas (I dance intermittently in my guild cantina, which explains my slow rate of progress) and most of my guildies who are elite entertainers are musicians. I'm just a novice, so I was interested to see whatexperienced dancers thought and what I might expect in the future. Definitely wasn't trying to imply that the issues weren't being communicated properly; our correspondent is good and our submitted issues list was one of the most in-depth that I've read.
Acouple ofthings have changed since the last report, so I also just wanted to see if people still had the same major issues as before.
I'm somewhat gratified to know that I'm not the only one who has a big problem with the fall rate and I'm glad that the devs have seen it on the report and hopefully are going to be looking into it when they get to Dancers.