Dancer Archive

Insight #1
If you're going to be a Jedi, earn the title. Do what it takes yourselfinstead of having your computer do it for you. It will be all that much more special an accomplishment if you do that.

Insight #2
The vast majority of those who complain about AFK entertainers entertain in cantinas on the core worlds. They don't want you in their face and they don't want you "cheating" them out of tips. Some complain because they don't like that you get an advantage over them by choosing to use what's there in the game for you, but if that's their only argument against, they're just whiny little **edit** anyway so I don't care to address their opinions. There is a solution to this. It is a two-pronged attack as follows:

1. Do it on an adventure world. They're not on adventure worlds so you won't be in their faces.


2. If you arrive in a cantina on an adventure world and there is an ATK entertainer there already, first, pick yourself up off the floor after fainting in shock. Then move to a different cantina. Do so until you find a cantina that is unpopulated with ATK. If they want the tips, they'll go to the adventure worlds. If they're not willing to do that little bit of work for their tips, they don't deserve them.

Now I'm not advocating one approach over the other. I will say that I achieved about half the experience I had to acquire to get to MD ATK and the other half AFK.

Thanks for asking. You could have gotten this information from one of the other many threads about this subject, but you're obviously not patient enough to take a few minutes to look. Funny how Yoda stresses patience, yet so few Jedi wannabes actually have any...

Since you feel you MUST afk your way through this profession (god forbid you get chef, you can't afk your way through a crafting profession), please do so in one of the rooms off to the side in whatever cantina you choose. Ask to join the entertainer group. After picking yourself off the floor, having fainted from the shock that there's actually a group leader at the keyboard, join the group. Even though your character is placed out of the main floor area, you will still receive a cut of all the healing exp and the grouped bonus to your dance exp--which is really all you are looking for.

Even if you're the only one in the cantina, I know that as a dancer I would greatly appreciate it if your character is not in the main area-combat folks who really need your services can find you--and if, after you've gone perma-AFK, an actual entertainer shows up, they can have free use of the main floor area without having to deal with an inconveniently placed NPC. (Yeah, ever notice how Sony didn't place NPCs right in the middle of the only open space in the cantina? Follow their example )

Good luck with your pursuit.

Many of the arguments against AFK performing do still apply.

The ones where AFK performing is detrimental to the level of respect entertainers get and also, the reduced rate of tips for others in the same region.

There are many people who justify not tipping entertainers because of IT IS POSSIBLE to afk macro through, and if there are AFK entertainers around (which there almost always are), it's a "free heal".

The big thing to me, personally, is just the level of respect that entertainers get, and how grinders (holocron or not) denigrade the respect that Master Entertainers get. Regardless of intent or not.

AFK-Grind if you want, but don't expect me to support or like it . At least respect me and the other performers enough to be at the keyboard when you're grinding through Entertainer Healing XP in a group.

Well I'll repost something I wrote in another message where someone posted the question "Who does AFK entertainers hurt". Now not all of this will directly apply to your situation. And I do sympathize with your situation... However let me suggest you do give it a try and see if you do have fun. I'm sure you won't change what you think or what you do based on this.. But you asked for opinions so this is mine, long winded as it is. Read it or not as you wish.

Well I'll present something...

AFK entertaining is viral in nature. People might well have fun entertaining. I didn't truly appreciate how much fun I could have until I had dancing IV. When I was dancing, AFK entertainers were almost unheard of. They were certainly the exception not the rule. Part of the fun for me was the interaction with the other dancers and the customers. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

But under other circumstances, if the norm when I was learning was AFK people, I might have given up because I never found the fun, or I might have just joined them to get the skills. Probably the former, as I don't so much care for game mechanics. I'm sure I'm not alone in this either.

If there are no AFK entertainers, people like me (No, I'm not claiming everyone is like me) have fun and stick with the profession. However, with AFK entertainers around, people are likely to see "Wow you can do that?" and since they never found the fun, they get sent a macro, run it, and that's it. Setting up a macro is the easy way to the profession, and if they found the easy way, why try anything else? Weather or not something is good or bad, people tend to be drawn towards something new to them.

For an illustration of this point... I was sitting at a starport playing my Ommnibox. I do this all the time with no problem. However, someone got curious and decided to click the play instrument option. The box of course moves to them. I don't fault them that, they didn't know, and were just seeing what the option did. However, now my Ommnibox was being passed around everyone at the starport because they wanted to try it for themselves. These people that if they hadn't known about that bug would have just happily listened to me while waiting for the shuttle now won't let me play without stealing my Ommnibox. At this point I put the thing away because it wasn't fun anymore.

Now when I used the term viral, perhaps it did provide a negative connotation. Good things can spread in a viral manner. However, anyone who has been around here awhile aught to know my views of AFK macros. Now since this is about who does it hurt... Given above, it hurts me personally. There are a lot of people who if they didn't know about running a macro AFK would quite happily be entertainers and enjoy the class. They would be fun to perform with, and may end up being quite impressive entertainers. But because they learned the easy way, they never bothered to go further. (No I'm not saying everyone again) Now they run a macro just like everyone else before they go and do something else. And you know what? I generally don't have as much fun interacting with their macro as I would have with them. So it has hurt my fun of the game. Again, I'm sure I'm not alone.

It hurts the profession. AFK entertainers are nothing more than NPCs. Only they are non permanent NPCs. If our profession has NPCs to perform the action, what is the point of playing the profession? (Another lead in to the viral nature) This was slightly addressed with targetted mind buffs (Mind buffs were always there, just weren't targetted before and weren't anything to write home about) but on the whole, there is still not much point to playing the profession, since NPCs can do it. Would you play a medic if people could just get droids that auto-heal them? Would you play a weaponsmith if players could just buy top of the line weapons from an NPC? Would you play a slicer if there was a slicing terminal to do your weapons and armor? And I'm not talking about NPCs that do it but not as good as a player.. As far as game mechanics are concerned, AFK entertainers are as good as ATK, so it wouldn't be a fair comparison.

And it hurts the people who need entertainers. I've noticed a cycle developing in cantinas as the AFK phenomenon spread. The population will grow, primarily ATK entertainers. As it grows, more and more of them become AFK entertainers. Soon you have a crowded cantina that is almost entirely AFK. This goes on for a few weeks, then everyone leaves as the AFK people reach their goals and stop and no new people have really started because of the extra cost of entry to the profession. (More on that next) I've seen a cantina that used to be a swinging lively place turn into a zombie city, then a ghost town. It really hit home when I went to Theed at prime time and saw only a small handful of entertainers, nothing like the times I remember when the group had to be split up because there were so many people.

It hurts the new entertainer who starts a character and dances for a bit then can't get training when they need it without paying an NPC trainer because people are AFK. If there were even half the number of people but they were ATK this wouldn't be a problem. I started a musician on one of the euro servers when the rest of the servers were down. I was toting my slitherhorn wailing out tunes. There were a few other refugees also on slitherhorns, and a few people who had better. However, when I got music 2, and asked for training, nobody responded. There were people there that could have trained be, but they were AFK. I ended up running a few missions so I could earn the money to pay for the training and buy a fizzz off the bazaar. If I were a new player I would certainly have liked it more if someone had been there to explain the ins and outs of music to me and train me and make an instrument for me.

Oh I should add this is from someone who has been dancing since when AFK was the exception not the norm.. So I know what it is like without all the AFK people.

Okay Niza, you said:

If there was a limited number of things you as a combat player could kill in the game that gave any kind of experience and money would you be happy if Josie who normally plays a dancer decided that to get a neat screenshot of herself with the title "mater gunfighter" it would be a good idea to plop her character down 24/7 unattended until she was a master in one of these places? What about after Josie's friends all got jealous and wanted to do the same thing and so nearly every spot you'd normally be able to train for skill and profit was taken over by a combat-bot that killed everything that spawned and auto looted it. How fun would the game be for you?

But this is not a fair statement. If there were a limited number of things that a combat player could kill and an AFKer were killing them all, what would the non-AFK player kill? Nothing because the AFK player would have killed it all. But is an AFK dancer stealing experience from you? No. In fact, you get more experience. Horribly unfair comparison.

I am a Master Dancer, and I ATK danced (most of) my way up there (yes, I admittedly did go AFK sometimes). No, I'm not really a fan of AFK dancing. I hate seeing the cantina cluttered with AFK dancers, and I hate the complaints that we get from out clientele. But you can't say that AFK dancers are detracting from your experience.

I am a Master Dancer, and I ATK danced (most of) my way up there (yes, I admittedly did go AFK sometimes). No, I'm not really a fan of AFK dancing. I hate seeing the cantina cluttered with AFK dancers, and I hate the complaints that we get from out clientele. But you can't say that AFK dancers are detracting from your experience.

I should clarify. When I say that you can't say AFK dancers are detracting from your experience, I mean your dancing experience points, not your gameplay experience.

Actually, they are.. If there is a group of AFK and you can't get invited because they are all AFK.. People will come watch them and you won't get thehealing experience.

Hmm, I already replied in the other afk thread you posted in... but yeah, it does hurt the real dancers. The hunting example given earlier w/ a finite number of targets is dead on. There are only so many patrons in any given cantina, so yes, you are taking away both money from people who decided to do this as their main prof and xp from those who are leveling. How can you not understand that this is bad for people who want to be doing this as part of their gameplay?

If tons of crafting NPC vendors were put in game passing out free wares, people would freak out screaming about preserving the economy. AFK dancers are just like freebie NPC vendors, and Ent is supposed to have an economy too. Entertainers support the crafting economy, and we're supposed to be supporting combat classes too. This pretty much breaks our whole purpose in the game. Now, don't you see how that is a whole lot of not fun? Even if you never wanted to do this prof in the first place, it should be pretty clear.

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Karballo wrote:

Brand new to this board, but I'm starting to pick up a central thought here, and a single question keeps coming to my mind:

What if I have no interest whatsoever in pursuing Master Dancer beyond what is necessary to fulfill a holocron quest? Does that change your opinion of me as an AFK macro user?

While I fully understand (and completely agree, by the way) with the idea that there's no point in grinding to master if this is the profession I actually want to pursue, but if I'm doing this to fulfill a holocron quest, well... a lot of the arguments I've read here don't seem to apply to that. I certainly never used any macros or exploits on my way to swordsman, I'll tell you that, nor would I have; I actually enjoy swinging a sword.

Quite a few of us who are doing the AFK macro thing have no desire whatsoever to become master dancers (or any type of entertainer, for that matter), and we'll drop the entire profession the instant we become master dancer.

From our point of view, the "best" solution is to go straight to Coronet or Theed, join a large group, AFK macro our way through to Master Dancer, then drop the profession and grab another holocron.

How does that interfere with your enjoyment of the game? I'm asking honestly - I have no desire to take away from someone else's game.

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Ya im gonna be here becuase my god **edit** holocron told me to be here.

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Velvet-dancer wrote:

Ask to join the entertainer group. After picking yourself off the floor, having fainted from the shock that there's actually a group leader at the keyboard, join the group.

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LOL!

Velvet... you kill me. You are probably my favorite poster on this forum. :-)

By the way... where's Siah?! We haven't seen her in days and days... we miss her!

/sob

C

I just wish there was an afk cantina,,,where all who wanted to afk forever and ever,,could all go to the same cantina,,all get in one great big afk group 24/7,,,any big city would work,,and all stay in the same cantina,,then real entertainers could migrate to other cantinas,,,

And actually the more I think about this idea the better I like it,,

OOPS!! How would anyone ever join the group? If the leader is afk,,,maybe there is a macro for that too??