Dancer Archive

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Else-Whira wrote:
I see that you wrote a big essay on why you are angry at me for "ignoring the combat folks" but look at what I said again... I already acknowledged your point and said it was valid.

The issue isn't that I want to ignore everyone walking in... I am just trying to find ways for us to co-exist pleasantly. Let me do what I enjoy and let everyone else do what they enjoy and all of us get more from what we enjoy.

Is that truely so terrible?

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My point is you can do what you enjoy today. Turn off your title and ignore people in spatial. That does not mean the mechanics we have are broken which was your original position. We all want to do what we enjoy and nothing stops you from that today. Changing the mechanics as you suggest does prevent me from doing what I like to do which is decide who I will buff, when, and where. If all our activities are purely passive then I can't differentiate myself or make it obvious I am available when the other 40 people in the room aren't. I enjoy the challenge and interaction, both dealing with the nice folks as well as the less nice. I even have fun dealing with some of the rude ones, making them look as foolish as they are .

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LyteFoot wrote:
I even have fun dealing with some of the rude ones, making them look as foolish as they are .

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See, but a lot of us don't.

I am going to extend the same invitation to you that I did to Siiri (who hasn't taken me up on it.) Come see what it is I do while I play, I'd love for you to get a better understanding of what it is I get my enjoyment from. I am willing to come to your server and do the same.

I'd be willing to bet that our play styles are not so far apart. I think you are exagerating how friendly you are and exagerating how antisocial I am to the regular folks who come through the cantina.

I didn't say you were anti-social. However you have said you prefer not to deal with the rude ones and described what you constitute as rude. I have found that a lot of the people I deal with on Corbantis who fit your description aren't rude; they are simply accustomed to dealing with AFK entertainers in one form or another.

All I'm trying to say is that you have the mechanics to deal with them how you want to now. Making our skills totally passive removes the mechanics for me to do it the way I like to. Imaji and I like the joint buffing, a big part of our game is interacting with combat players and buffing; we like to consider ourselves a premiere buff team. Now another big part of our game is hunting and entertaining with our friends and guild mates so it isn't all we do but we do like it a great deal. I'm simply trying to point out that the current mechanics do allow for both styles and a major change to purely passive does not.

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LyteFoot wrote:
I didn't say you were anti-social. However you have said you prefer not to deal with the rude ones and described what you constitute as rude. I have found that a lot of the people I deal with on Corbantis who fit your description aren't rude; they are simply accustomed to dealing with AFK entertainers in one form or another.

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What time do you typically come online and where can you be found working? I would like to come anc watch what you do differently than I do. I won't announce myself or get in your way.. I just want to take a peek and see what it is that you are doing.

I can be found in Tarq's Theed cantina when I am dancing. Most days I am online and dancing in the evening (7pm-12:30am PST) or in the morning (7am-11am PST). (Today I won't be online much due to RL concerns)

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Ikewe wrote:

I personally prefer the support role. I certainly like the idea of giving us the chance to become more useful by getting us out of the cantinas with our trusty droids. But I wouldn't feel good if that meant that the truely social players who weren't interested in getting out of the cantinas suffered because cantinas were abandoned. Surely there's a happy medium here some where...just not certain what it is. Perhaps if cantinas became not just social hubs but "passing information/spy" hubs as well. In that scenario people would come to the cantina not just because of "forced healing requirements" but because there was actually something they could participate in while they were there.

Personally, I do not feel that we need another profession with droids it will just add to the already cluttered spacial chat in the starport. But to keep with your ideas in regards to being a support character we could make some other professions more usefull and some of the skills tree's better in them. Ranger except for helping a BH find his mark without a droid and the extra harvest bonus there is really no point to the profession most of the tree's are wasted. If doctors, dancers were required in the feild to use camps or if in town use Cantina's and hospitals they would not only keep the buildings active but would still allow groups of people to go out into the feild and do healing away from the cantina's. In this senario people will need 3 professions but for the non grouped people cantina's and hospitals will be the places to go to get these services. It will help out remote player cities and also help out the cantina's. It will add value to some of the tree's in ranger which is not a bad thing. With a few simple fixes to the system there will be a lot of people's problem solved and it may make the dancing profession actually viable because groups are more likly to come into a cantina and ask an ATK player if for $XXXX they want to come out with there group and do player heals. The other thing this solves is doctors spamming the starports with there services the game offers ways now that it has been fixed for players to find active hospitals and active cantina's.

Reality there should be a no spacial zone within the shouting distance of the starport that way I might actually be able to get outside of it without all of the spacial noise.

As for the info net type of concept I think that is perfect it could also be incorperated into smuggler where dancers can receive the information and pass this on to smugglers and other combat professions. ATK dancers/musicians would be the only way to get this information and these missions.

I'm dead set against the cover charge idea. Yes I want to be paid for my services but that doesn't always need to be in the form of credits. I've had people give me loot kit items, enhance foods and drinks, heck even weapons. If we could get rid of afk healing machines then perhaps the deny service could prove to be a useful tool. As it stands now if we choose to deny service then they just turn their head a bit to watch the afker next to us. But what if they couldn't do that? What if I could go on the ent chat and group chat and say "this JO is going on my deny service list because "insert offense here" ". Then many of my peers might also choose not to heal the offending player. One of the reasons I was able to avoid a lot of childish behavior when I first started dancing is because there were no AFK entertainers any where on Talus. If I chose not to heal someone, then they had to buy a ticket to Coronet for healing. Get rid of the afk healing and I think we'd become a bit more powerful.

There should be some dancer/musician cost to buffs and then like doctors musicians would be required to charge something for a buff. The way the system is setup now there is no incentive to pay an entertainer every other profession in the game except for entertainer requires some type of payment for service. Ranger my payment is in demand because I will not go out and help you if you don't pay me because I can go and kill something and make the money from that. Entertainer time is basicly that worthless so without a cover charge or something that is needed to perform buffsthat deteriates over time there is no incentive for a buff bot to charge at this point and hench the afk entertainers cost operators nothing.

On the AFK POINT:

AFK is a symtom of a bad design and some of the design choices in the game taking it away or making it harder to do is not going to fix the problem there is very little SOE could do in there programing that if I wanted to make me not be able to AFK 24/7 with out macro and without anything else. My joystick alone that I use for JTL can fake being a keyboard, a mouse and pretty much anything else I want it to be. So unless the disable all joysticks background programs and all the like keeping me offline is pretty near impossible. Where there is a will to afk there is a way to accomplish it. So most entertainers should get off the AFK problem because there is no solution to it for people that want to do it. What SOE should be concentrating on is involving entertainers in feild work and where they have to be ATK because you never know what is going to happen in the feild. In the cantina's they are protected but in the feild camps maybe able to resit some creatures but there will be that split second if it is an AFK camp and entertainer where the creature could be spawned outside and come right through and have ago on you and you are dead. The developers could if they wanted make the program look for recuring camps and place creatures nearby that may agro. If all members around are ATK then there is some protection but no one around entertainer and possibly scout are dead in that split second while the camps are changing or have poofed.

For the

Good or bad those are my ideas from the time I have spent in SWG and the many professions I have went through.

Gosy the difference between using an ingame macro and using your joystick or any other external third party function to play AFK is legality. The ingame tools make it a sanctioned activity, the external tools make it a banable offense. So if the ingame functions were removed so that you could easily identify people breaking the rules they could actually start enforcing them.

Every game faces issues with people running external tools and every game company develops ways to deal with it like monitoring for grossly repetitive activity in logs, CSR's walking around asking people questions to see if they respond, etc. The design flaw with SWG was making in game tools that allowed this taking the abuse to levels that they simply could not stand a chance of controlling.

Else-Whira if you just want to hang out on Corbantis feel free. I'm usually online between 6 p.m and 11 p.m. Central time. If I'm in a cantina it will be Theed but I'm also out hunting, doing DWB buff groups, decorating a new house, spending time with my guild, and traveling with my entertainer friends doing random street and starport gigs so I won't promise I will be in any particular spot at any specific time. Now with all that said I am gonna repeat that I did not say I do anything any better than anyone else. I said I like our role and don't want it taken away by making it passive.

I also said, and I'll stand by it, that ignoring people who come in and ask about buffs, etc is as good as being AFK. AFK entertainers have put us where we are because it frustrates the non-ents to come into a cantina full of people and get no response to their questions. So both sides are frustrated by the situation which just feeds the cycle. I try to answer the questions even if it is just to tell them I can't help. At least they know someone heard them which beats the heck out of feeling like they are shouting down a well.

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LyteFoot wrote:
Else-Whira if you just want to hang out on Corbantis feel free. I'm usually online between 6 p.m and 11 p.m. Central time. If I'm in a cantina it will be Theed but I'm also out hunting, doing DWB buff groups, decorating a new house, spending time with my guild, and traveling with my entertainer friends doing random street and starport gigs so I won't promise I will be in any particular spot at any specific time. Now with all that said I am gonna repeat that I did not say I do anything any better than anyone else. I said I like our role and don't want it taken away by making it passive.

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I spent a great deal on Corbantis over the last couple of days. Never saw you in Theed, just a lot of AFK entertainers.

I sent you a tell and it was either ignored or you were AFK.

I'm still throwing it out there... Any time you think you'll be dancing in a public spot "buffing" I'd love to see what it is you do differently.

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LyteFoot wrote:
I also said, and I'll stand by it, that ignoring people who come in and ask about buffs, etc is as good as being AFK. AFK entertainers have put us where we are because it frustrates the non-ents to come into a cantina full of people and get no response to their questions. So both sides are frustrated by the situation which just feeds the cycle. I try to answer the questions even if it is just to tell them I can't help. At least they know someone heard them which beats the heck out of feeling like they are shouting down a well.

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Again... Come see what it is I am doing before throwing out helpful hints on how to improve my gameplay.

You sent me a tell? I'm only AFK for seconds at a time to grab a drink, etc so I'm not sure where it went. Otherwise like I said I'm in and out of Theed. Saturday we played out front, Friday night we hit Mos Eisley streets, Sunday I was with my guild and working on a new house Imaji and I placed.

Message Edited by Sakura-Ikari on 02-15-2005 01:17 PM

Actually I too am dead set against allowing us to buff any where we set a droid. My thought about the droids was simply for dancers to use special effects and musicians to have "backup" (sorry my brain isn't functioning properly so hopefully that's clear). I simply want us to be able to heal BF any where we can buff. If we can buff in a camp then I want to be able to heal BF. As it stands now it makes no sense to provide a mind buff in the field on Dathomir during a break in Phase 4 because some of those people have so much BF they are going to end up dying quite quickly. Sorry that wasn't clear in my post. It sounded like I was wanting to set up at the starport for buffing and I definitely do not want that.

I also agree that if someone wants to find a way around the system (any system) they certainly will. However, if they came out and announced that AFKing was an exploit and you could be banned for it then people might think twice about being so blatant about it. My point was simply that removing afkers would make for a whole new era in our galaxies because people had more to risk. Opposing factions, overts, Jedi, heck even rude players might have to be more careful about their interactions with entertainers or risk be "black listed". Personally I think that fits well with the entertainers as spies role that I'd like to see developed.

As for cost and having your stats migrated, are you human? If so that explains why you don't have the action costs that some of us do. If you are not, please PM me as I'd like to talk about this with you further.

cheers,

Ikewe

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Gosy wrote:

Personally, I do not feel that we need another profession with droids it will just add to the already cluttered spacial chat in the starport. But to keep with your ideas in regards to being a support character we could make some other professions more usefull and some of the skills tree's better in them. Ranger except for helping a BH find his mark without a droid and the extra harvest bonus there is really no point to the profession most of the tree's are wasted. If doctors, dancers were required in the feild to use camps or if in town use Cantina's and hospitals they would not only keep the buildings active but would still allow groups of people to go out into the feild and do healing away from the cantina's. In this senario people will need 3 professions but for the non grouped people cantina's and hospitals will be the places to go to get these services. It will help out remote player cities and also help out the cantina's. It will add value to some of the tree's in ranger which is not a bad thing. With a few simple fixes to the system there will be a lot of people's problem solved and it may make the dancing profession actually viable because groups are more likly to come into a cantina and ask an ATK player if for $XXXX they want to come out with there group and do player heals. The other thing this solves is doctors spamming the starports with there services the game offers ways now that it has been fixed for players to find active hospitals and active cantina's.

Reality there should be a no spacial zone within the shouting distance of the starport that way I might actually be able to get outside of it without all of the spacial noise.

As for the info net type of concept I think that is perfect it could also be incorperated into smuggler where dancers can receive the information and pass this on to smugglers and other combat professions. ATK dancers/musicians would be the only way to get this information and these missions.

I'm dead set against the cover charge idea. Yes I want to be paid for my services but that doesn't always need to be in the form of credits. I've had people give me loot kit items, enhance foods and drinks, heck even weapons. If we could get rid of afk healing machines then perhaps the deny service could prove to be a useful tool. As it stands now if we choose to deny service then they just turn their head a bit to watch the afker next to us. But what if they couldn't do that? What if I could go on the ent chat and group chat and say "this JO is going on my deny service list because "insert offense here" ". Then many of my peers might also choose not to heal the offending player. One of the reasons I was able to avoid a lot of childish behavior when I first started dancing is because there were no AFK entertainers any where on Talus. If I chose not to heal someone, then they had to buy a ticket to Coronet for healing. Get rid of the afk healing and I think we'd become a bit more powerful.

There should be some dancer/musician cost to buffs and then like doctors musicians would be required to charge something for a buff. The way the system is setup now there is no incentive to pay an entertainer every other profession in the game except for entertainer requires some type of payment for service. Ranger my payment is in demand because I will not go out and help you if you don't pay me because I can go and kill something and make the money from that. Entertainer time is basicly that worthless so without a cover charge or something that is needed to perform buffsthat deteriates over time there is no incentive for a buff bot to charge at this point and hench the afk entertainers cost operators nothing.

On the AFK POINT:

AFK is a symtom of a bad design and some of the design choices in the game taking it away or making it harder to do is not going to fix the problem there is very little SOE could do in there programing that if I wanted to make me not be able to AFK 24/7 with out macro and without anything else. My joystick alone that I use for JTL can fake being a keyboard, a mouse and pretty much anything else I want it to be. So unless they disable all joysticks background programs and all the like keeping me offline is pretty near impossible. Where there is a will to afk there is a way to accomplish it. So most entertainers should get off the AFK problem because there is no solution to it for people that want to do it. What SOE should be concentrating on is involving entertainers in feild work and where they have to be ATK because you never know what is going to happen in the feild. In the cantina's they are protected but in the feild camps maybe able to resit some creatures but there will be that split second if it is an AFK camp and entertainer where the creature could be spawned outside and come right through and have agro on you and you are dead. The developers could if they wanted make the program look for recuring camps and place creatures nearby that may agro. If all members around are ATK then there is some protection for the dancer or the scout but no one around entertainer and possibly scout are dead in that split second while the camps are changing or have poofed easy solutions you can't do much healing when you are in a cloing facility and your can't place a camp from there either

Entertainer was the cheapest profession to master out of all of them there was nothing required for it once I got my BE enhanced clothing and that was it from begining to master. There needs to be something in entertainer that gets used up over time. Accaragram or stim b's don't count really because I am a smart player and just migrated my stats with an ID that was looking for the XP.

Good or bad those are my ideas from the time I have spent in SWG and the many professions I have went through.

Message Edited by Gosy on 02-12-2005 03:54 PM

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