Dancer Archive

Outside of songs or prepared speeches, I keep anything I say from a macro or alias in /tell, or in /groupsay at worst. Everything I say in spatial that isn't a song, I type myself.

I think Sirii's comments have validity in that the more we have to prearrange to get the buff working, the more we have to say, the less likely we are to want to say it uniquely every time, the more we sound like a bot, the less entertaining we become.
Given that, what have people's experiences been regarding wonked buffs? I don't know if I've been extraordinarily lucky, but I give a very limited amount of instruction for a buff (one of the 'possible wonkers' threads had way more things listed than I ever mention), and I rarely end up with a wonked buff. In the rare occassions it is wonked, I've only had it fail a second time once.
Given the rarity of the situation, I've not taken to explaining this and that about what to do and not do when receiving the buff, and so I've been able to sound less robotic and focus more on being entertaining. But wonking is obviously an issue, else we wouldn't have so much discussion about it. What do ya'll explain ahead of time, and what kind of success do you have doing so?
Me, I don't see Sirii's fears being realized in my daily experience.

Ok, I'm going to stay away from the word wonk for a while.. when did it become the semi-official word for a messed up buff?

First of all, this isn't about buffbots. See the sticky.

Does anyone else cringe when they get what is obviously macro'd interaction with someone? This sort of thing annoys me (as a recipient, not as a non-interested observer) more than a completely afk character.
If I'm still walking around the corner into the cantina, and I hear "Welcome Scipionus Mentus, to the Bestine cantina! Come in and enjoy the dancing and music, and let us heal your mind!" then I have no reason to believe the the person who told me that took the time to see who I was, see if they recognized me, or anything specific to me. I think of it like the recorded messages I sometimes get on incoming phone calls.
This is even more prevalent for people who are buffing, perhaps for the reason that there is so much that can make it go wrong that the customer needs to be made aware of. I certainly don't want to demean the work of those who have created useful macros/aliases for timing and instructing on the buffs (Tiaga's uber macro comes to mind). Those always impress me. On the other hand, I feel that this sort of approach lacks the personal touch, and especially does not allow for the customer who already knows how things work, or situations when say, there are no other entertainers around (why would you tell me not to watch or listen to someone else?).
Anyways, I was wondering what other peoples thoughts are on this. I'll go ahead and describe what I do, but I don't want people to feel I'm being an elitist. I know people like to handle these things differently. When I'm the recipient of automated interaction, I don't like it, so I try not to do it. Maybe other people feel differently, and that's fine.
When someone comes in and asks for a buff, I'll volunteer, and explain my pricing, if there's any. Once the buff is agreed to, if they aren't already listening to me, I'll tell them to please start listening to me (and ask if they have a music request if they seem to be somewhat social). Once I see the hand clapping, I'll check if they have a weapon equipped and tell them it can interfere, so it's probably best to put it away for now. Finally, I'll do "/setp;/alarmaddin 0 3 buff done" and then tell them it'll be about 3 minutes (the delay in my typing now, and the delay in my typing later, will get those extra 20 seconds necessary). At this point, I'll watch and see if they target anyone else, but in the meantime I'll usually ask what the buff is for, see if I can get some conversation going. When my alarm goes off, I'll tell them in the next pause in conversation (i.e. I won't interrupt if he's in the middle of telling me a story) that the buff's all set, and they should /stoplisten and make sure everything worked out ok. If it didn't, I'll give a reason or two why it might not have, and tell them we can try again (this time not giving any instruction at all, as they already know what's going on). The only macro involved in all this is when I turn on my 5 flourishes macro to make sure I have enough flourishes going for the 3min20sec buff. Anyways, this is obviously very adaptable for someone I know has gotten buffs before, someone who's a newb and doesn't even know how to listen to a musician, etc.

P.S. This is in the dancer forum because of all the player interaction threads that have been here lately, despite my being a musician first and foremost.

I'm with ya.

Every word that comes out of my virtual mouth is hand typed and unique, typos and all. I don't have a single macro that says a word. I completely agree with macros making life easier, but I don't think that should extend to social interaction.

The only time I feel macro'ed text is necessary is for information-type messages during a time-sensitive crisis, such as during a battle, when one doesn't have the time to type.

However, I'm not overly bothered by others' use of macros to talk. I just, for the most part, ignore it.