Dancer Archive
Thread: Dancer Issues 7-25-03 FINAL (in case anyone wants to view for reference)
Hi there everyone! Just giving you all an update here. The devs are still reviewing all the letters sent in the the Correspondents. As soon as they finish going over them and I get some feedback I'll be sure to let you all know! Once that happens I'll be opening up a new ideas thread so you can discuss more ideas. In the mean time I'm still keeping track of anything posted on the old thread in case you have some input. Thanks again and feel free to email me if you have any questions, several of you already do and I don't mind helping if you need to ask something or just get something off your chest.
I would like to see more of a symbiotic relationship between dancers and musicians... for example, better musicans could make dancers fall less often (you get more into the music and hit that magiczone). Bigger bands should reduce the action cost for everyone. Not so much that healers can't come in and get healing experience too but maybe cut it in half -- people can *always* flourish more often to burn up action for healers if they want to. And better dancers should do the same for musicians, we are their muse and our dancing should inspire them!
Let everyone in the band be able to follow the bandleader so we don't listen to SW1/SW2 so much! I need different music! That is probably this dancers number one issue with dancing.
I'm totally for more flourishes but really if you take exotic,2,3,4 as one dance you have 9 flourishes you can use. I setup my flourisheslike this: /changedance exotic2;/flourish 1 -- so I can get the effect I want.
Many dancers would like a more traditional bellydance.
In general a lot of the dance animation could be cleaned up and made to look more like dancing -- some of it is pretty awful but a lot of it is very nicely done. On the WHOLE I love dancing though and I can be happy with things for a little while. I'm glad that some improvements are already being made!
By the by, Raven... something I'd love to see that I haven't seen mentioned is the addition of /danceflourish, and making it different than /bandflourish. I don't want to hear a billion slitherhorns doing that one really squealing flourish just because the dancers look good doing a certain twirl, for example. *shrug* Quite a bit far down the line, however.
On the same note, there doesn't seem much to keep a dancer dancing once they attain master status. I haven't seen the first master on Intrepid since the day she hit master, and it seems to be the same with the musicians. Perhaps more ways to choreograph dances and such that would make it interesting? (And less of SW1 & SW2!!! I swear, I hum it in my sleep!)
Just as the band can co-ordinate starts and stops, I would like to see dancers have this ability. A few dancers getting together with a synced macro could give quite a show 
I know our healing abilities are important but over half our patrons are not sick, they have come to see us
As far as the Tech tree, well going up that ladder should put an end to falling... wouldn't that make sense?
Mariki, yes it would be nice if dancers could start together -- or would just syncronize after a /bandflourish. I organized a dance troupe the other night and we had six dancers all doing basic2 and using /bandflourish. Didn't get much experience for doing basic2 (that's all a couple of the dancers could do)but we hadso much funand we got a lot of tips and compliments.
Congratulations Ravenmist!
Wow I need to read the boards more often, but here my two cents on the state of the dancer <giggle>
Reduction of cost to dancing:
It is too early in the game’s maturity to try this. The chef class is already fighting for survival. Let's not put another nail in the coffin. No entertainer should use spice. It is just tacky to throw up in the middle of a performance, but higher level food and drink really do help. I recommend we as a community get those chefs and bartenders working!
The light show:
Please, oh please, don’t remove the action point cost. The last thing we want is people just spaming the light show because it’s free. Some things are just for show, the /bandflourish and the light show are two of them.
Master dancers falling too much:
I think the root of the problem is that the game requires us to be leveled above a dance to reduce falling and there is no level above master. I suggest a simple fix to raise the XP cap above master to 80,000 and for every 20,000 above treat it as a fake level for falling purposes.
Bad dance animations:
You touched on this, here is a complete list (please push this one until they fix it!):
Lyrical2, Lyrical, Formal2, Formal, Footloose2, and Rythmic2.
Flourishes:
I am glad they are adding new flourishes to the game and I am glad you are pushing on this. A comment on the "flourishes that have nothing to do with the dance" though, don’t take all of these away please. Each dance needs a couple of these to transition into a /changedance. It is a very important tool and badly needed especially for a dance like Exotic. Flourish 7 from the popular would be a good flourish to get BACK into the flourish 7 slot on exotic. Can we, as a community, ask that flourish 7 and 8 be "transition" flourishes and all other be unique?
I would love to see a "mirror" ability that allows a dancer to chose the mirror opposite of a flourish.
Example: Moonwalk makes me walk 3 steps left/slide 6 steps right/walk right 3 steps, it’s "mirror" would simply make me do the opposite walk 3 steps right/slide 6 left/walk left 3 steps.
Band tipping:
I see this asked for a lot. The problem is most want it forced on the customer. I suggest it be implemented like this:
/btip <amount> <bank option>
The /btip allows the user to tip the whole troupe. Its operation would be simple /btip 100 would cause 100 credits to be distributed across the entire troupe with the remainder going to the target of the /btip command. The only flaw in this system is if there are 10 members of a troupe and the person /btips 5. I suggest for simplicity that the whole 5 go to the original target. If course if the DEVs want to get fancy a better system is the remainder should be split between the target and the bandleader with any new remainder going to the original target.
Thanks for reading,
Sultrina
File this as a wish list item: Combat medics get a ranged heal effect. Healing aside, it's a fantastic special effect. A "swoosh" sound and a ball of light shoots across the room at a dancer. When it hits, it "explodes" into a shower of sparkles that surround her for 3-4 seconds. Never mind the healing, I'd love to have that as a special effect for the dancer and/ormusician technique lines.
Sultrina, as far as action costs are concerned someone else brought up the same issue. The point was made that the market will still be there, especially for the lower level dancers. I don't want to see action cost reduced to where we have no use for chefs tho, and I doubt they would do that anyway. I do however feel we should be able to put on a decent length show especially at master level without having to depend on a chef to make it last longer then 2 minutes.
The spamming problem with the light shows has occured to me too so I know where your coming from on that. The point I was trying to get accross to the devs was more that Something needs to be done with this line period.. reduced costs, longer effects, something. I really don't think theres a chance they'll get rid of the cost all together. If I did I would of written them back or made it more clear about the concerns with that. The mind pool might still be a decent option tho.
Really tho, if you think about it the problem isn't as big as I first was thinking it might be. If someone is spamming it my group they'd be booted, which should be the norm. If its annoying patrons its going to hurt that person tip wise, another way to fix it. Then of course with player/PA run cantina's and such there would be no problem either. So really the only place it would be a concern is public cantina's in the newbie town and only then if the person was not concerned with making exp or tips and just wanted to annoy people.
As far as the animations, have no fear, as long as I'm around those will always be getting shoved down the devs throats until their fixed. An option for /bandtip is being pushed by the entertainer Correspondent so I'll wait and see what happens there. Thats really a good issue for him to worry about which lets me focus more on just the dancers.
Thanks for the feedback Sultrina, hopefully I'll finally hear something back from Q soon.
Ravenmist,
Thanks for responding I will go pester the entertainer lead about band tip but there are a couple of little boo boos in my original post it should of said this:
Master dancers falling too much:
I think the root of the problem is that the game requires us to be leveled above a dance to reduce falling and there is no level above master. I suggest a simple fix to raise the XP cap above master to 800,000 and for every 200,000 above treat it as a fake level for falling purposes.
Bad dance animations:
You touched on this, here is a complete list (please push this one until they fix it!):
Lyrical2, Lyrical, Formal2, Formal, Footloose2, and Rythmic2,Pupular
There is no reason to change the healing branches of the dancer's tree. I cannot tell you how many compliments and tells I get about how quickly I was able to heal someones wounds and battle fatigue and the appreciation for these skills. I got a 7k tip the other day for being able to heal so quickly!!!
If you aren't getting tips, maybe you should look at how you react to your customers, do you greet them, do you talk to them, are you gracious to their comments? I can tell you I do make my living on tips alone. I have a medium Corellia house, all the clothes I could ever need. I am a dancer and I want for nothing. I normally dance 2-4 hours a night, and I easily make between 8-10k in tips in that short time (also did close to this before master). One thing I do advise, is not to even MENTION tips to your customers....they don't feel pressured to tip then they tip better imo.
Ki'ki Da'O
Master Dancer
Tarquinas Server
SlickRiptide wrote:
File this as a wish list item: Combat medics get a ranged heal effect. Healing aside, it's a fantastic special effect. A "swoosh" sound and a ball of light shoots across the room at a dancer. When it hits, it "explodes" into a shower of sparkles that surround her for 3-4 seconds. Never mind the healing, I'd love to have that as a special effect for the dancer and/ormusician technique lines.
When I first got Dancing Technique I and was the first dancer in my town to get it, I often wished I should shower another entertainer with a spotlight. I felt bad being the only showy person attracting attention in a cantina (but not bad enough to stop being flashy). Now, people are more used to it.
But I still think it'd be nice to be able to shine the spotlight on someone else as well. Low-level entertainers need love too.
Im gonna try this one last time. Raised this idea a few times through beta and once since retail.
In real life nearly every dance troupe dances in formation, otherwise it looks like a bad nightclub. I think there should be a range of formations available to dancers in game that move the grouped dancers into predesigned "shapes" and always return them to that spot after they flourish. ie a single straight line, 2 rows of dancers, a square formation, a circular one, 4 rows of 4 etc. There a many of them to choose from. I think it should only be operative for the group leader so as to stop it being overused and causing even more visual chaos.
I know as someone who enjoys watching dance in real life that a properly stage performance can be very very visually pleasing, whereas a rabble will always look like, well,a rabble.