Dancer Archive

I have a wait and see attitude with this quest. The "audition" part is a bit vague. (Lei thinks how can a NPC "judge" a performance?) Anyway it is content. Keeping our collective fingers crossed.

Reroute guys! We got our In Development thread, yay! Go now!

Now, silly me, way back when I used to do the entertainer missions (the ones that used to pay out about 500 credits or so and didn't take so long to finish - back when there was some point in doing them), I used to think that I might be earning some kind of reputation points (fame, renown, whatever you might want to call them) or something that would open up new gameplay experiences. The way the missions were described it often sounded like I was doing a favor for someone who might pay it back or that it would be a step forward for my career by accepting the mission. I also thought it was cool when an NPC said he was an agent for Jabba, and he wanted me to do this dance mission for him. I thought maybe I was earning Jabba faction or something that might eventually allow me to go into Jabba's fortress and do some kind of dance mission for Jabba. Well then they nerfed the entertainer missions so that they seemed to take longer to win, dropped the payout so that it wouldn't even cover the shuttle flight to go to the location, and I figured out that doing these mission wasn't getting me any further along in the game.

Still I think there's a good idea in there - about being able to build fame with your entertainer character. Maybe that's an idea they can use in these new social missions. For example to access certain missions in the game you have to have acheived a certain fame status either by doing lesser missions or maybe just by spending lots of time dancing or going to different venues or something. This fame status could even have other effects on your healing ability (people would be more awed at seeing you perform and heal and buff faster - that kind of thing), but that's kind of another issue. If nothing else, then I think that there need to be aspects of these missions where you need to have a certain minimum amout of skill to complete - like a novice dancer alone might not be able to complete, but perhaps several levels of dancers and musicians could complete, or a novice dancer with a master musician. Just like a novice pistoleer might not be able to complete a combat mission but maybe a few could together or with a master TKA or something. An example might be that someone is required to dance Exotic2 - doesn't have to be your character but maybe someone in the group.I think another great addition to this would be to include ID's in it as well. Perhaps the requirement is to have a certain look, like maybe Jabba is looking for a blue skinned dancer. Or maybe you can't get recognized from one mission to the next so you have to look different each time. Then you'd want to make sure to have an ID along with you.(I imagine a system where you always have some certain chance of being detected/recognized, but the chance is decreased by having the ID change your appearance a certain amount - perhaps the ID could even have a display that indicates your chance of being recognized as they change features).

To give these missions a point, there's got to be an interesting goal to them. Now granted I might be willing to go through a dance 'themepark' which involved nothing more than dancing at various venues to work my way up to performing for Jabba for example, but that probably wouldn't be all that interesting, and I doubt many members of our community would be too thrilled by that (though I think that if they did have such a mission available at launch we might have thought it was kinda cool. ). I do like some of the ideas about spy missions and so forth. My idea might be to have missions where our goal is to use our entertaining abilities as a distraction while someone else goes off to plant a bug or tap into computer or something like that (I can imagine a situation where you have to time a smoke bomb or distract effect so that someone can sneak into a restricted doorway unnoticed. ). Certainly you could have missions where the goal is to entertain some character in the hopes of overhearing some kind of useful information that you could pass along to the quest giver. Such elements would work great in a rebel or imperial storyline and probably even a neutral one like the Corellian Corvette has. I think you could also have a purely performance themed adventure where the goal is to put on shows and maybe talk to people saying the right things to advance or maybe retrieving certain items that you could use in an act (special instruments for musicians or props/outfits for dancers, etc.), and maybe the ultimate goal is to perform in some large show perhaps with NPC backup dancers or musicians that cue off of what you do. That could be fun too. The rewards for these missions could be anything from credits to new songs/dances to instrument/prop schematics or whatever.

Another element to these missions is risk. Would we want to risk only that if a mission fails that we have to start it over again, or are we willing to risk going into a mission where if it fails, the NPC's might attack and kill us - or feed us to a hungry rancor? There is certainly an argument to be made that some of us may be noncombat types, and wouldn't want to have to worry about fighting our way out of a failed mission, but I personally think it might be fun to go on a potentially dangerous mission where the prize is a new rare dance or something.Maybe I would bring along a TKA friend just to be safe!

Those are just some of the ideas I've always thought might be cool for our professions.

Shi'ann
Twi'lek of Mystery

I like your ideas, DanceRulez. I'm all for an espionage mission that might end in death at the point of failure. I like the idea of distractions as well. And, the Image Designer involvement is a good one, as they are part of the entertainer professions, and I can't recall of the top of my head if Image Designers were included the first time I heard about the social dungeon from the devs. I think they were, but I can't be sure. Going undercover on a spy mission would surely involve changing one's appearance.

And, to add to your idea of rewards, I also seem to remember the devs at one point saying the rewards to the social dungeons would be new dance routines, for example. I think it would be great if another reward for completing a very difficult social dungeon would be perhaps a "schematic" for a better buff, maybe one that does maybe a 150% buff instead of 100%, or perhaps the buff lasts 2 and a half hours instead of only two hours, or possibly both. That would make those who successfully complete the mission or perhaps buy the schematic at a high price from someone who has, an equivalent to some of the schematics for weapons or armor in the combat dungeons. It'll make us better at what we do and more in demand. Perhaps those of us who earn the better buffs will be even more marketable and be able to charge higher prices for our enhance abilities. Pay 5-10K for the normal 2 hour buff, or 15-20K for a 3 hour buff, all at the choice of the buyer, of course.