Dancer Archive

Entertainers, the grand experiment!

We're that little petri dish that the researcher puts in the corner with a new and exciting culture on it. Surely this will grow into something fantastic! Just wait!

Then that petri dish is abandoned. Forgotten. On a little corner of the lab, in the sunlight, strange things begin to take shape. The scientist never looks at the dish, it's a forgotten experiment, but for some reason nobody can understand, he continues to let the experiment in the dish live...and it flourishes!

Then one day he happens to glance at it. Holy crap! The thing is all kinds of interesting colors! It's...fuzzy. And...the dish seems to be vibrating just a bit. Is that a beat he can just barely hear?

Scared, the researcher decides this is getting out of control, but another scientist steps in before he can dump it and says, "Whoa! You can't do that! That's a new life form, and you'd be commiting genocide! You have to let it live and see what happens!"

"But it's out of control," says the first researcher. "I don't even know what it is anymore, or how to nuture it or help it grow or if I even WANT it to grow in this lab!"

"Doesn't matter," says the second researcher. "You created it, you've got an obligation to it now. You can't just toss it, that would be extremely irresponsible."

The first researcher thinks hard and long about what to do with his grand experiment, now out of control. Scratching his chin, he says, "Well, I really don't wanna deal with it. I can't up and kill it. What if I shove it in a dark closet where we never have to look at it again, withdraw all nourishment...and if it dies, then I'm not responsible, right?"

The second researcher nods and says, "Yeah, that'd be ok, I guess."

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Esharra wrote:

In this game, as with any organization, there are appropriate channels of communication. You guys all work or go to school..you understand the reasoning behind the processes imbedded in your occupations..you surely don't need me to explain the importance of such things.

This forum is the appropriate venue for Dancer input. As you all know, my responsibility is to read every post and gleen from them ideas and information that we, the players, think will make our game better. Our responsibility as players is to post our opinions and ideas, honestly and sanely. This responsibility is not to the devs but to ourselves.

We're going to get our best reactions from them by being constructive. How we provide our feedback is just as impactful as what we have to say (and yeah..believe it or not..we do make an impact).

I know everyone is very frustrated right now. It might *appear* to some that we have lost our game. Players of most/all the professions are experiencing that feeling in one way or another..the game is changing and some of the changes are very big.It is easy to focus on the short term in the context of a game where you can finish a template in a matter of days..hours. But we've far from lost.

I know it is tough for us to imagine the dev's vision of the game's direction. It is not easy for a player to see a game as a whole. We see our game, our interests but beyond that, it is hard to focus on the overall picture.

In an interview a couple of years ago I was told the following by a game designer (who is not with SOE) on the topic of player participation in MMOG development:

“It’s probably best to think of it as a political system, such as our pluralistic US system, where different interest groups are battling it out for influence, and it’s hoped that the right processes are in place so that the eventual outcome is close to optimal in terms of resolution.”

Another one (also not with SOE), in a moment of frustration, said:

"It's like a bad marriage that you can't escape from. You both stay in it for the children, yet seem hell bent on making each other miserable."

Guess which view I would prefer our devs to have of Dancers.

What we have "lost"...in the short term..is what motivated the bots. And it might take a little time without it for the bots to all go away. What we started playing for we still have. And we're going to get a lot more. Based on what we have been told, it will be implemented in a way that rewards the players and discourages unattended play.

Frankly, I'd prefer we didn't get stuff that took them a month to put together, test and prop to live. We are still an experiment..they can't build us off a formula, as they can with combat..there are no maps where we are going. I want them to take their time. And I plan on nagging you guys for input, trashing the forum with polls and patiently submitting our ideas along the way. Because that's how I believe our best game will be born.

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Wow. Umm, wow. Wow.

Great post.

Umm, wow.

/snog

/wookieehug

I still think making anyone's game, that they're paying to play, totally bunk for awhile is bullspit. Ican only hope it will really only be for "awhile" and "awhile" doesn't turn into another year of disappointment.

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Esharra wrote:

I gain a lot of satisfaction from performing at events. While that player created content is fun for me, I would like some dev created content as well. I enjoyed the theater quests..not that they were particularly challenging but in that it was fun to have something new & different to do that didn't require a lot of planning on my part. But recently I needed to find dancers who had learned Theatrical (1) on one server for a video. It was easy for me to come up with a few off the top of my head..me, Scip, 2 of my closest friends and another friend who I see less frequently but knew had learned it. And the list stopped there. So I hit the cantinas and asked around. I got two more names. I started asking why no one had done the quest. The universal answer was that they weren't interested in it. Not that it seemed like it would be boring but that their interest in playing a dancer was satisfied by dancing in their group and occassionally providing buffage for their friends. Of course I thought immediately of the demographics (the area where I've worked in MMOG design). On a server where I know there are probably between 150 & 200 master dancers and I can find 7 who have participated in what is essentially our only post-release content.

As a whole, entertainers are much more diverse in our game expectations than are crafters and combatters. The vast majority of us seem quite satisfied with the state of the professions, except of course for the unattended play problem. Those of us who come to the forum, come here seeking out more gameplay, something from which we can derive a sense of satisfaction differently from those who are happy to sit in group all day and chat. We arethe enigma.

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Ikewe wrote:

It would be interesting if we could query the playerbase and see how many entertainers on larger servers enjoy simply relaxing with friends and have no need for additional "content" from the developers and compare that with smaller servers. Would it be an equal percentage or would we find that players who are attracted to and stay with larger servers really are looking forsomething different than those who are attracted and stay with smaller servers?

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That would be interesting to learn about. It would make sense that those who seek out socialization would want to play on a server with a larger playerbase, just as those who are more inclined to explore would lean toward playing on less crowded servers.

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picklesSW wrote:
Entertainers, the grand experiment!

We're that little petri dish that the researcher puts in the corner with a new and exciting culture on it. Surely this will grow into something fantastic! Just wait!

Then that petri dish is abandoned. Forgotten. On a little corner of the lab, in the sunlight, strange things begin to take shape. The scientist never looks at the dish, it's a forgotten experiment, but for some reason nobody can understand, he continues to let the experiment in the dish live...and it flourishes!

Then one day he happens to glance at it. Holy crap! The thing is all kinds of interesting colors! It's...fuzzy. And...the dish seems to be vibrating just a bit. Is that a beat he can just barely hear?

Scared, the researcher decides this is getting out of control, but another scientist steps in before he can dump it and says, "Whoa! You can't do that! That's a new life form, and you'd be commiting genocide! You have to let it live and see what happens!"

"But it's out of control," says the first researcher. "I don't even know what it is anymore, or how to nuture it or help it grow or if I even WANT it to grow in this lab!"

"Doesn't matter," says the second researcher. "You created it, you've got an obligation to it now. You can't just toss it, that would be extremely irresponsible."

The first researcher thinks hard and long about what to do with his grand experiment, now out of control. Scratching his chin, he says, "Well, I really don't wanna deal with it. I can't up and kill it. What if I shove it in a dark closet where we never have to look at it again, withdraw all nourishment...and if it dies, then I'm not responsible, right?"

The second researcher nods and says, "Yeah, that'd be ok, I guess."

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Great analogy, Javy.

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Tralmek wrote:

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picklesSW wrote:
Entertainers, the grand experiment!
[snip]

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Great analogy, Javy.

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