Dancer Archive
Thread: Poll: Public Buffer?
Goldy_Lhim
Thu Jul 22, 2004 5:43 am
#14
I generally plant myself in and around theed during the week. I can't usually play long enough for a big raid and such - I save that for the weekend so I'm available for buffs that whole time during the week. I would guestimate I usually buff 7-10 strangers per week. That's with me advertising I am buffing every so often. I don't know if just not a lot of folks need/likedancer buffs or if there's some buffbot on my ignore list so I can't hear them that they go to. /shrug
I'd guessa bit more if I place myself on a combat heavy isolated planet like dathomir or endor. Usually on those planets I find a group looking for a buff at a time, the rest of the time is spent twiddling my thumbs. I generally don't like sitting around with no one to talk to which is why I usually am found around Theed.
There are a lot of master dancers (live master dancers) in Theed that I usually group up with and chat with so they could just have their own folks they are buffing. Only person that repeatedly pesters me for buffs is my boyfriend 
Elhana
Thu Jul 22, 2004 5:54 am
#15
Well over the last week or so I've been buffing people a bit more than I used to. With the decline of the hologrinders I feel more incentive to go and buff people. The reduction/removal of buffbots and the AFK hordes would certainly make me more interested in going off to dance and buff people rather than just concentrate on my tailoring stuff.
Esharra
Thu Jul 22, 2004 5:59 am
#16
With that in mind, other players don't interact with me for buffs nearly as much as they interact with me because I am talking in spatial. As for making money off of it..people tip me (us) a lot when we entertain & the tips are disproportionate to how much I'm really healing. It is obvious, in my experience, that I am making more credits by just being entertaining than by virtue of my game mechanics skills.
Panthu wrote:
DarkY0da wrote:
Is this week ave. ? Daily ?
Hmm, I'm not sure really... I'm really just trying to see how much you guys are using buffs to interact with people you don't know and making money off of it as a service...
Drygo
Thu Jul 22, 2004 6:46 am
#17
I usually make a concerted effort to go to a Cantina for the purposes of buffing people at least 4 times a week. Sometimes, like Saturday, before the buffbot arrived I can get a fair amount of customers over the span of two hours. Most of the time, I don't get any requests.
So, even thoughI can truthfully say that I probably spend 7-8 hours a week for the specific purpose of going to buff strangers, that doesn't mean that I'm actually doing any buffing. Most of it is spent waiting around. If you're looking for specific amount of time where I actually have customers to buff? Well, probably 2 hours a week.
It's quite a change from several months ago when I was asked non-stop to buff people. But, it gets very discouraging when out of 8 hours that you take out of your life to go buff people, you're lucky if you have customers for a quarter of your time.
Of course servers vary. There are some where I could go for 8 hours and not even get one customer. But, Kettemoor seems to allow Drygo buffing for 2 hours a week. I'd certainly be more inclined to spend more time and buff people if I thought I was going to get any customers.
Osawa_Scylla
Thu Jul 22, 2004 6:49 am
#18
This past week or so I've given out very few buffs, but I've been spending most of my time over on Bria getting ready for the Cantina Crawl. Normally, on my home server, I'd say I usually do around 4 or 5 buffs a night.
Osawa
Groovymarlin
Thu Jul 22, 2004 7:13 am
#19
For the past two weeks I've been trying to play on La'lepa for a few hours every night. I've been in the Theed Cantina mostly, and in Bestine a little bit. I spend about 2-3 hours in the cantina and during that time I give a LOT of mind buffs. I can tell by all the accarragm I'm going through!
About half the mind buffs I give are to repeat customers or friends, half to people I don't know. Let's see...three hours per day in the cantina...about 75% of the time spent buffing, so that's about 2 hours 15 minutes a day giving buffs. Half of that (1 hour 7 minutes?) to people I don't know. The other half to repeat customers and friends (and my friends usually do tip, even though I tell them they don't have to!).
It's funny...there's a certain dancer who hangs out in the Theed Cantina a lot too, and always spams advertisements for her mind buffs. I mean, continuous shouting "I can give you a 105% mind buff in four minutes, ask me how!" over and over again -- even though she's ATK! I finally put her on ignore LOL. Anyway, my point is that people don't like spam, and you cannot advertise mind buffs the same way that doctors advertise their buffs. I know this because even though I'm not spamming, I get as many or more customers than she does. All I do is say "yes" when people ask for a buff, send a tell that I can buff when someone runs in and shouts "can anyone mind buff?", and I do mention something in the auction channel about every half hour or so.
I've actually made pretty good money this week and last week.
Warryyr
Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:27 am
#20
explor793 wrote:
Music/dance buffs laster for 2 hours, you MUST BE AT THE STARPORT WHERE PEOPLE ARE LVLING or PVPing, 10 mins per shuttle plus cost, sometimes 2 shuttles so 25% of your time is gone, plus traveling to a city's shuttle port just doesn't make sence. You CAN NOT PLAY THIS GAME WITHOUT A MIND BUFF and you have to make the most out of it when you do get it.
Thank god for buff bots who are on 24/7 at the places need, i NEVER see live buffers on ALL the time i'm playing at the startport i'm lvling out of and ready to buff me ASAFP while my med buffs tick away.
1) Stop shouting. Shouting is never a productive way to converse.
2) everything is all about you, isn't it. What if someone sent you a /tell while you were fighting, asking them if you could head back into town to teach them some lvl 1 skill. Would you do it, if your app points were maxed out? Oh, probably not - your time is much too precious. Likewise, believe it or not, we are real people (not NPC's) and we actually do stuff in game. Sometimes we're off buffing/healing minds for other people.
3) We can't buff in starports, I see no reason why we should hang out near starports. That makes no sense. It's understood, we can only buff/heal mind in cantinas, and cantinas are where people go for these services. If we stood near starports, we'd be wasting our time, and no one would ask us if we are buffing because we're not in a cantina.
4) Buffbotting is using a game mechanic in a way that was not intended. I think it's a shame you're so enthralled and enthused about such an exploit. But sure, once a speed-hacker or some other exploit shows itself in PvP, you guys are the first to scream how someone's an exploiter and they're ruining your game. Sorry, but just their exploits hurt your game, buffbots' exploits hurt ours. It's as simple as that.
Geddyfan
Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:28 am
#21
I love to spend an evening buffing with my dancer, however I will not buff in a place with a buffbot already there. It's rare after traveling around that I find a populated area say major NPC city or popular secondary planet cantina that doesn't have a buff bot there.
Also, most PA's have buff bots.
I rarely try anymore and lately have been spending a lot of time on Bria where the entertainers I've met in the /ent channel are friendly and active.
So the answer would be 5 players a week max get my buff.
I hope something is achieved soon to make it beneficial for a player to want to run a dancer/musician/entertainer and to the players a benefit extended to them for seeking out live interactive entertainment.
meeuki
Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:33 am
#22
4) Buffbotting is using a game mechanic in a way that was not intended.
could you find the dev post stating that for me? i'm having trouble finding it.
could you find the dev post stating that for me? i'm having trouble finding it.
Warryyr
Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:42 am
#23
I used to buff upwards of 40 people or more per night (complete strangers) in either Coronet or Theed.
In the last few months, I've seen my business drop to getting 10 strangers to buff, if I'm lucky.
When I buff strangers, I play my Nalargon since it screams, "Master Musician!"
Last week, I paid for a quickness buff (to service my customers faster with a 3 minute full buff) and spent 2 hours in Theed cantina. I had 2 strangers ask for a buff. Two. It was pretty sad. Well,one asked, the other one I just conversed with after they planted themself in front of me and I asked them, "would you care for a mind enhancement?" They at first weren't interested, then said "eh sure, what the heck- buff me."
I then travelled to Coronet and was promptly greeted upon arrival by a barker droid advertising a buffbot for only 6k. I proceeded to Coronet Cantina, and stood amongst the AFK'ers, making fun of their spam, for another hour while my Quickness buff wore out. I didn't have a single person ask for a buff. This has been the majority of my experiences lately when trying to buff the public. People just aren't interested.
To all those saying they "can never find entertainers" then I'd say they're not looking very hard.
And, for those who say to go to adventure planets, I've been there and done that. Those places tend to be the home of the worst buffbots ever. And the spam can be even worse than Coronet Starport with all the begging for solo groups, doc buffs, directions, mission details, etc.
Warryyr
Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:43 am
#24
meeuki wrote:
4) Buffbotting is using a game mechanic in a way that was not intended.
could you find the dev post stating that for me? i'm having trouble finding it.
Run along little troll, back under your bridge with you...
QuixoticJedi1
Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:44 am
#25
meeuki wrote:
4) Buffbotting is using a game mechanic in a way that was not intended.
could you find the dev post stating that for me? i'm having trouble finding it.
From the SWG Stratics chat:
"The Musician and Dancer professions are currently the only professions in game who's every function can be played 100% afk all of the time. While hologrinding is ending, this has given rise to a new generation of buff bots that are just as bad, if not worse, to these two professions. Do the devs have any strategies being worked on to resolve this problem? And, if so, what are they and when will we see them."
<Runesabre> We as a team feel AFK macroing is harmful to the game, especially to Dancers and Musicians. We have had a lot of discussions internally on how to solve this problem without hurting the professions at the same time.
Doriana
Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:46 am
#26
This is a tricky question for me because if the guild bot owners aren't on for a raid or if one of the bots isn't in the base area I end up buffing groups for it.
For example, last night I realized it was nearing vuln time, so I stopped tending my harvesters and travelled back to bases and joined the defense group to help set up, but it was a waste of time because the bot was on. So yesterday I buffed no one. But the day before the bot was not on so I buffed a full group and few stragglers. Of those, maybe 5 or so I didn't know and wasn't sure why they were there.
In public cantinas I get maybe 5 requests per week for a buff because there are at least two public bots in coronet (and a few more scattered around places like dant mining, theed and bestine), one with full 125% dance and music skill tapes and another with partial so by the time people get to where they are doing missions they have already stopped in coro to get buffed, and peddling dancer buffs next to the free 3 stat buffers in coro gets me 0 requests per week.
So I'd say between public cantinas, player cantinas and base defense, 10 or so non-regulars at the most, and sometimes I'll go a week getting no requests at all even though I've never gone a week without spending some time dancing in public.
Sometimes I advertise, maybe once every 15 minutes, sometimes I don't. I am always open to relocation to give buffs assuming I have not made a previous commitment.
For example, last night I realized it was nearing vuln time, so I stopped tending my harvesters and travelled back to bases and joined the defense group to help set up, but it was a waste of time because the bot was on. So yesterday I buffed no one. But the day before the bot was not on so I buffed a full group and few stragglers. Of those, maybe 5 or so I didn't know and wasn't sure why they were there.
In public cantinas I get maybe 5 requests per week for a buff because there are at least two public bots in coronet (and a few more scattered around places like dant mining, theed and bestine), one with full 125% dance and music skill tapes and another with partial so by the time people get to where they are doing missions they have already stopped in coro to get buffed, and peddling dancer buffs next to the free 3 stat buffers in coro gets me 0 requests per week.
So I'd say between public cantinas, player cantinas and base defense, 10 or so non-regulars at the most, and sometimes I'll go a week getting no requests at all even though I've never gone a week without spending some time dancing in public.
Sometimes I advertise, maybe once every 15 minutes, sometimes I don't. I am always open to relocation to give buffs assuming I have not made a previous commitment.