Dancer Archive
Thread: Number 1 Issue. 9/19/03 (for your reference)
BAM BULLS EYE. (This if from a master doc)
a. Must increase the watch-time to buff time ratio
b. Group only!!! Can you say cash cow!!! Think of it as a private dance session.
c. Add some type of "In the field group buff"?
I guess the problem with mind buffs (not complaining that we have them. It's great afterall!) is that when there's an AFK Master in the room, everyone watches them and doesn't watch the dancers trying to get up the skill tree. It's not a big deal when you're grouped and able to gain Entertainment Healing XP at extraordinary rates, but when you're not in a group it's killer.
If I wasn't an entertainer, I'd choose to watch the one that gives me the mind buff over the one who doesn't heal me as fast.
It would be nice to have the buffs a targeted skill so you couldn't do it while just being watched. That would help the lower level dancers because then they could move up the skill tree a bit faster -- more people would watch them.
Alsatia wrote:
Should the "new and improved" targetted buff (assuming we are able to get it) take as long to administer as the current buff? I believe it's 15 minutes right now. Should this change? Tied to that: Should an entertainer be able to buff more than one person at a time? Should this be tied to skill level (techniques branch, I guess)? Should effectiveness be tied to skill level, but all entertainers can target the same number of people?
The reason I ask is, given a hunting group of more than 2-3 people, even the long duration buff could begin wearing off before everyone is buffed if it takes 15 minutes per buff, one person at a time. I'm curious what others feel is an acceptable time requirement for the buff, and whether or not the number of targets or the effectiveness (or both) should be increased at higher skill levels.
My thoughts: First, the maximum effective /watch time now is 15 minutes, as you say. But the buff does not START until you /stopwatch or the dancer stops dancing. That's when the 30 minute duration timer starts.
Also, I wouldn't even mind if they retained the 15 minutemax buff time- someone can be buffed for 2 minutes, 4 minutes, or however long, but for shorter duration simply by /watching for a shorter period of time. As has already been noted, we're not using any resources to produce this effect so an instantaneous result isn't necessary.
The idea here, I think, would be to retain the basic concept of our existing Master buffs but instead of making them passive we're asking that they be active by targeting players. Since any number of players can /watch us and be buffed simulataneously now, itwould make sense to allow us to buff however many players we target and /buffmind - that's not a hardship on us because we can put the /command on a hotkey. Healing and Battle Fatigue would remain the same.
Finally, yes, I do think this should not be a Master-only ability. Masters should provide the very best buffs for the longest durations, but if non-Masters cannot buff at lesser durations/levels then this solution will have no impact on AFK macroing at all, because most of those AFKing are not yet masters. We want to encourage more entertainers to remain at their keyboard and do their job. Also, having the ability to buff at, say, Dance Tech 2 or 3, still keeps it out of the hands of those who took novice entertainer just to avoid the cantinas.
Given the way almost all of the other professions work, it seems the solution here would be to change all of our special effects to schematics. They would then be crafted and act as Mind buff. Target the person and use the special to buff at whatever rate that special buffs at (the specials might need to be spread out on the Tech skill tree a bit to give some logical progression to the buff levels - especially since Master doesn't get one.) Of course, the resource cost of these would increase as level/power does.
I'm not saying I like the above scenario, but it does seem to fit into the SWG system the best. I'm not sure most dancers and musicians are going to want to go through all of the crafting and resource gathering that now plague the medical professions... I can see it now - dancers asking to be tipped in inert petrochems...
"Given the way almost all of the other professions work, it seems the solution here would be to change all of our special effects to schematics."
Oh God, please NO!
The thing that will drive me from this game fastest is if I have to do any more crafting. I hate HATE HATE!!! crafting. I entered the entertainer field partially because I didn't need to craft anything. If that changes, it will destroy the last bit of SWG that held my interest.
I'm glad to see this idea has not only resurfaced, but is your number 1 issue as well.
Some things, though, from my perspective:
- The duration MUST at least be 1 hour. Anything less is not worthwhile.
- The buff must be at least half as good, at Master level, as a Master Doctor Buff. I can easily add 2K of points to 6 different pools, and that's near the top end. A Mind buff from a Master would have to be at least(lowest ammount) half as good. Otherwise it isn't worthwhile.
- It must not be an instantaneous buff the way Doctor ones are. That would be considered one of your drawbacks.
- It must be targeted application only, the way Doctor Buffs are. And only one player at a time.(Same as Doctor)
- It can not be stackable i.e. Have two different Musicians/Dancers buffing you.(And yes, I know the seperation of the buffs currently)
- It should NOT be done via craftable items. My god, there is NO reason to add even more crafting to this game. Honestly, please, no more crafting. Trust me, you don't want it.
Hope the devs hear you 
I like the idea of an active effect, but with time constraints like this... it could be tricky. One possibility would be that increasing performer skill provides the ability to buff more people at a time. Another possibility is to have the effectiveness decrease with more targets (but not necessarily simply divided across all recipients.) For example, what if the basic single-target buff were a 150% buff (buffing a person with 800 mind to 2000 mind.) Adding a second person would reduce the total buff by 1/20th (5%), and buff for about 142% Ten people would reduce by 10/20ths (or one half), or 75%, etc. This also gives some strategic choice between "give everybody in the group some small protection" and "concentrate on those most likely to get hit." Or alternately "bring along a second dancer and a second musician, because we expect to get hurt a lot tonight." The percentage drop could be different, or even non-linear. *shrug*
My input:
Yes, good choice of issue.
I agree that the buff should be targetted and should last over an hour. [At the moment, in my experience, not many of the combat-types can really be bothered to sit around waiting for 15 minutes for a buff that wears off so quickly. But they'd probably make the effort if the buff lasted long enough to be worthwhile]
I suggest that it could be implemented this way:
People in your group are automaticallygranted 'buff permission' so that you don't need to remember to select everyone in your hunting party. All the members of your group can gain the buff at the same time (if we have to buff people one at a time it's going to take a mightly long time to get a group ready for action! ). This is pretty much how it works now, and is fine -- providing the buff duration is increased to a decent time.
If we want to buff people outside of our group, they need to be specifically targetted and we can only do one at a time. This means that you can look after a customer of your choice who comes into the cantina while you're in the entertainer group there. People that you've selected for buffing should be given a message to tell them, and a yes/no option to take it.
I agree this would make afk entertainers less useful (a positive point indeed) and ought to encourage cantina customers to be somewhat nicer to their entertainers.
Ravenmist, those are good ideas, but there is a problem with that last point:
Also this needs to be something that is targeted. A way to grant this buff to those we choose to help not just anyone that watches us. This would help people see us as a more useful profession as well as reduce the effectiveness of long term afk macro users. This needs to be something we give to people directly and consciously.
When I'm with my guild, we sometimes have full group, I cannot imagine how long it could take me to individually buff those that mighteven remotely "need" the buff let alone everyone in the group. Targetted buffing would be a nightmare in those situations.
Understandable concern... which is why when discussing this with the devs responsible I'm going to push for one of two things. Either the buff be instant but use up a large amount of action or some such so we can quickly buff people. Or if it takes the full 15 minutes that we can target more then one person. I understand some people may not think its fair we could do a buff without using resources but I really don't think one little thing we can do to really help people is too much to ask in this case.
Vanje wrote:
Ravenmist, those are good ideas, but there is a problem with that last point:
Also this needs to be something that is targeted. A way to grant this buff to those we choose to help not just anyone that watches us. This would help people see us as a more useful profession as well as reduce the effectiveness of long term afk macro users. This needs to be something we give to people directly and consciously.
When I'm with my guild, we sometimes have full group, I cannot imagine how long it could take me to individually buff those that mighteven remotely "need" the buff let alone everyone in the group. Targetted buffing would be a nightmare in those situations.
"However, I just don't see us being given a "worthwhile" buff if there is no "pain" on our end."
I agree, but I think crafting is an unrealistic way to achieve it. There are other ways of doing it - how about requiring certain items of jewelry in order to do the higher level dances - that would force dancers to make an outlay for giving certain strength heals. Jewelry is expensive, yet it's not immediately apparent - i.e. it wouldn't force you into wearing clothing you don't like.
I feel the same way about it with a full group of 19 others from your guild have you have to buff.
Maybe the way to target would be best to invite them into a group and let only those in the group watching you recieve the buff.
I am also worried about the amout of action points that dancing for 15 minutes non-stop would eat up. 10 minutes of Dance 1 plus flourishes uses about 750 action points. Someone would have to use alot of stim packs to keep our action points healed if we had to use the higher level dances to either buff them faster, increased amount of mind buffed, or both of them.
My thoughts on it.