Dancer Archive
Thread: Dev post regarding inspiration buffs
I believe that assumption is incorrect.
Lady_Ardath wrote:
Why do we NOW get the ability to buff ourselves???
It would seem the coding ability has been there all along, yet we've been denied the simple benefit of our own services.
Lady_Ardath wrote:
Why do we NOW get the ability to buff ourselves???
'Cause there was a communication problem and Inspiration "Buffs" should be thought of more of a replacement for wound healing than a replacement for mind buffs... and we've always healed our own wounds.
who knows if we'll be able to do our own specific buffs whenever those come around..
Drygo wrote:
On the one hand there's this little bit of sadness because it seems that they've pretty much validated afk play and have no intentions of removing it. I still think this is bad game design, I'll never agree with it.
They are accepting thatpeople want toleave the keyboard for periods of time (Ibelieve feedback from this forum somewhat encouraged this). Players seem to have differing opinions of what is a reasonable period of afk play, ranging anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours. With everyone equally as adamant regarding their opinion, where should they draw the line?
I've not had the opportunity yetto devote an indepth conversation regarding unattended play with the devs. However, I have had first hand experience with the expense and lack of manageability of trying toenforce a EULA clause against unattended play when it has so permeated a game. I know..everyone thinks it is so simple..trust me on it or not..I've been there. The other suggested solutions seem to center around removing or affecting game functions. For every function affected to prevent unattended play, a positive use is damaged.
The information we are receiving is that they want to encourage attended play and discourage unattended play through game dynamics. I think this will result in an increased quality of game for dancers while still allowing players to leave the game running.
I think unattended play is bad for games. I believe it hurts balance andskews demographics. I do not play unattended. It has been very obvious to me that my rather extreme view of unattended play is not popular on this forum. I am still submitting the feedback that the vast majority of dancers posting on the forum are against unattended play but in favor of being able to leave afk for moderate periods.
I'm sure there are a lot of other really good reasons also that people can come up as to why they shouldn't have to spend 5 minutes logging again.(And if it takes you 5 minutes to log in then use that hour to build the new pc please...)
On an OT comcasts DNS servers are down... and while I can't even connect to google... for some reason I get surf the SWG forums with no trouble at all...
DarkY0da wrote:
On an OT comcasts DNS servers are down... and while I can't even connect to google... for some reason I get surf the SWG forums with no trouble at all...
Esharra wrote:
It has been very obvious to me that my rather extreme view of unattended play is not popular on this forum.
For what it's worth I personally think you're right on..anyway.
What I think would help us a lot (hey if we have communcation going, lets run with it) is a dev definition of AFK. Because sometimes I get the feeling that they think of AFK differently than we do.
While I personally, in a dream world, would limit AFK to 15 - 30 minutes max, I could live with an hour. I can absolutely compromise on short-term "I'm gonna go take a quick shower or feed the kids" type AFK -- it's the 2, 3, 12, 16, 20 hours at a time that's the issue. But do the devs think that when we are "anti-AFK" that we mean -all- AFKing, even 2 - 3 minute breaks? Or do they really understand that we've evolved to generalize "short term AFK" and "long term AFK" into one phrase? I really just can't fathom that they think that permanantly AFK characters that are never intended to be played are a benefit to the game. But I can, on the other hand, fully understand why they feel that short term AFKing can never (and I can see the "should never" point) be removed.
I wonder if there's a communications breakdown, where the message has been passed around so often and in so many forms that it's gotten garbled, and they think that we would be unhappy if they removed long term but left short term AFK...when I think most of us would be willing to accept those 15 minute or so AFKs...
No one on the forum has been more opposed to "AFKing" than I have been for almost 2 years now. But let's remember the two acronyms that were popularized by Sultrina, Velvet Dancer, Sinda Blackstar, Tiaga, myself, and a few others (I honestly can't remember who invented the first one... I invented the second). They were:
LAMErs -- standing for "Long-term Afk Macroed Entertainers"
and
LUMPs - standing for "Long-term Unattended Macro Performers"
Notice that both of these acronyms contain as their very first (compound) word, "Long-term". I've never heard anyone railing against "short term unattended game play." I don't think many people object to someone, oh, making a quick run to the water closet or to get a soda or something, and just letting their dance macro run. I've done that a few times (not often, but once in a while). My total AFK time is like 1 minute though, when this happens. Or occasionally when the band is performing, and one of the other people is running the /bandflos, yeah, I step away to get a snack for 1 or 2 minutes. For things like this, most of us would agree, no harm/no foul.
What we generally object to are people like this guy, Ionic'Storm, in Coronet on Naritus. He is in this one corner, on an AFK shout macro, literally 24/7, as far as I can tell. He's there in the morning, at mid-day, in the afternoon, in the evening, late at night... all day, every day. If the server is up, the toon is unattended, macroing, afk-buffing, in the cantina. THAT is what we mean by LAME or LUMP.... not stepping away for 5 minutes.
If the devs don't know that we see a difference between short term/occasional AFKing and someone who basically buys an account for the purpose of keeping it logged in, AFK, buffbotting, 24/7, then there has been a serious communication breakdown and it needs to be repaired -- immediately.
C
Hobbytla wrote:
If AFK is here to stay for the foreseeable future I wish they would remove the option of turning off your AFK flag at least.
That's a great idea. Post that in the follow-up to his post on the In Testing thread! That's a relatively simple fix that would make a world of difference. At least it would put some teeth into the "ignore AFK chat" function.
Esharra wrote:
Drygo wrote:
On the one hand there's this little bit of sadness because it seems that they've pretty much validated afk play and have no intentions of removing it. I still think this is bad game design, I'll never agree with it.
They are accepting thatpeople want toleave the keyboard for periods of time (Ibelieve feedback from this forum somewhat encouraged this). Players seem to have differing opinions of what is a reasonable period of afk play, ranging anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of hours. With everyone equally as adamant regarding their opinion, where should they draw the line?
I've not had the opportunity yetto devote an indepth conversation regarding unattended play with the devs. However, I have had first hand experience with the expense and lack of manageability of trying toenforce a EULA clause against unattended play when it has so permeated a game. I know..everyone thinks it is so simple..trust me on it or not..I've been there. The other suggested solutions seem to center around removing or affecting game functions. For every function affected to prevent unattended play, a positive use is damaged.
The information we are receiving is that they want to encourage attended play and discourage unattended play through game dynamics. I think this will result in an increased quality of game for dancers while still allowing players to leave the game running.
I think unattended play is bad for games. I believe it hurts balance andskews demographics. I do not play unattended. It has been very obvious to me that my rather extreme view of unattended play is not popular on this forum. I am still submitting the feedback that the vast majority of dancers posting on the forum are against unattended play but in favor of being able to leave afk for moderate periods.
But, in that 15 minutes I can even do so much as take a shower. It's certainly long enough for me to havea bio break, or fix a quick meal.
And, if there's any truth to the fact that the devs have used input here to determine not to remove afk, I think maybe a poll should be started with the simple question I posed above and see what the answers are among the non-buffbots so that you can present that majority view.
Groovymarlin wrote:
It's good that a dev followed up on this today. Their In Concept document was poorly worded. They state that the inspiration "buff" will replace mind buffing, but that's not really the case. It's more a replacement for mind wound healing. In that sense it's easier to accept that all levels of entertainer can do it, especially IF there are going to be other buffs in the elite professions that DO offer a replacement for mind buffs.
What it means is, as of this time they are taking away the Master Dancer and Master Musician buffing abilities, abilities we have a great deal invested in and giving us nothing in return. So far nothing, not even and "In Concept" idea has been communicated as to what, if anything, they will be replacing these abilities with. We have become so conditioned to receiving next to nothing as fas as DEV attention that even something as minor as this has many cheering. This is a minor replacement for something they are taking away, it is not something they are adding to our abilities. In addition as it works now, the higher your abilities to give the buff the lower your XP gain from it, so the better you are the less your "reward" for it. This is a poorly thought out implementation and gives the appearance of having been put in place quickly to quiet us, not to truly integrate us into the CU.
Chessack wrote:
(I honestly can't remember who invented the first one... I invented the second).
C
That was Lorilei.
Ravanne_Esi wrote:
gives the appearance of having been put in place quickly to quiet us, not to truly integrate us into the CU.