Dancer Archive
Thread: New Inspirations on TC!
Lycantha wrote:
Buffs that become "manditory" will, as in the case of mind buffs, cause people to go the alt route rather than find an actual entertainer.
That's probably true and QUITE a sad commentary on the players of this game in general... that they are so anti-social they'd rather spend $15/month and grind two whole professions than just deal with another player for a few minutes to get their buff.
I know, it'll happen. And it's just very... very... sad.
C
Chessack wrote:
Muzz wrote:
Who is trolling? The point is, just as there were numerous Doc ALTs for buffing pre-CU, this is now likely to happen in guilds with alot of crafters after this goes live. When someone needs a buff, switch over to the ALT, dance/play and buff the crafters, switch back to main.
Can't guilds do that with everything already though, Muzz? I mean, our guild had a shipwright who basically just crafted stuff for the guild. She never really paid any attention to vendors (she had one but it wasn't very well stocked) and she had enough money that she didn't need to run a business. So she was our dedicated "ship builder" and I got every chasis I own on 2 accounts from her for about 25% of market value (she sold them to us for about 10% above base cost). Isn't that effectively like having a "bot" shipwright?
And you could go on. Our guild has dancers, musicians, docs, crafters of every sort, and we take care of each other. By joining our guild the architect provides you with a free small house. That's kind of like having a "bot" architect in a way, isn't it? (He's not a bot, but it's still the same, and it presumably cuts into the business of every other arch in the game.) Our AS (Yoss, who has posted here on this thread at my request) makes armor for great prices for us, to our custom requests. When I was a chef I made food and drink for people and sold it to them at cost, if they were vets, or gave it to them for free if they were noobs.
Isn't this all basically the same thing? What you're saying is, "A decent guild will provide its members with whatever services they need or desire." That's always been true of any good guild. I am not sure how I see that this is different.
Even though all guilds do provide such services, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of people needing crafted things (except insofar as loot has ruined things, but that is another issue entirely and has nothing to do with dancer buffs). If the fact that most guilds have their own AS and WS who provide things cheaply to their members hasn't broken those profs yet, I don't see why guilds having their own entertainers would break us either.
C
You are quite correct, they do. But to be an AS or WS that makes quality stuff, even if just for guildees, means that time and effort has to be put into the profession. And they also tend to stay in the prof for longer term.
Part of the point of Entertainment classes is the social aspect, as has been stated many times by the ATK Ents here. The ALTs won't be interested in the prof, or invest any time into it. It will be grinded AFK, and they will be logged on only for however long it takes to buff guild crafters. The prof will be done only because the buffs will be essential, and players won't want to take the chance of travelling around to various cantinas in the hope of finding an ATK Ent who will be able to provide the buff they require. When it changes and the buffs are not essential the prof will be dropped like the proverbial hot stool.
But meh, what do I care. I'll get my buffs without the need to visit a cantina and, as one of the blueys here has said it's out of everyone's hands apart from the Devs. Fact is, this is not something that can be put in and tweaked later, they absolutely have to get it right first time or it'll be a disaster. Info and stats have been passed onto them, whether they decide to act onthem is another matter.
Muzz wrote:
The prof will be done only because the buffs will be essential, and players won't want to take the chance of travelling around to various cantinas in the hope of finding an ATK Ent who will be able to provide the buff they require.
Which is why some of us here have been asking for two years for a galaxy-wide registration system so people can check on their datapad (or wherever) and know up-to-the-minute which cantinas contain live dancers and/or musicians who can serve them. If we had this, you wouldn't need guild bots at all.
But sadly, this feature request has never even been acknowledged, much less attempted, and so we are kind of stuck. The 10% resource thingy is kind of beside the point, in actual fact. The screaming is because something we give out is perceived as "needed" now and, unlike vendors which you CAN do a global search over now to find the needed equipment, there's just no good or easy way to find us. Dump the resource thing and give us something else to buff from any other profs and you have the same problem.
If it's any good, players think they "need" it and they want it to be convenient and easy to obtain. If it's not "needed" that mostly means it is not any good, and nobody is going to want it or care about it.
The solution is not to make everything crappy and thus not needed (though that is where the Ent profs have slowly been sliding to, prior to this pub on TC). The solution is to let us have stuff that we can give out that is just as needed as your weapons or Yoss' armor, BUT... make us as easy to find as your weapons and Yoss' armor!
Maybe if we all agitate for that, everyone can be happy -- you can get what you need conveniently, because you can find us as easily as finding a resource on a vendor search, and we get to provide what we want to, a needed service to our fellow gamers.
C
Chessack wrote:
Lycantha wrote:
Buffs that become "manditory" will, as in the case of mind buffs, cause people to go the alt route rather than find an actual entertainer.
That's probably true and QUITE a sad commentary on the players of this game in general... that they are so anti-social they'd rather spend $15/month and grind two whole professions than just deal with another player for a few minutes to get their buff.
I know, it'll happen. And it's just very... very... sad.
C
Or not. I craft in the wee hours of the morning on Valcyn. I live on Tattooine, in a research city. Friends list, no ents. Map, no ents. Ok, find recruiter, go on leave so as not to be shot by starport guards, go to theed. Nobody home. Check map. Nobody home. Ok, go to Coronet. Endure 10min loadin time, heartily enjoy the frame by frame slideshow heading to cantina, find afk bot in leotard doing basic with no flourishes. Lovely.
Take one look at the latest profession astromechs, see where musician is. That tells a huge story.
I was an ATK Dancer, I still am with my chars on other servers. I try my best to support live, atk entertainers. Howerver, manditory buffs require service. If an alt bot provides that in place of the rare and occasional live Ent on Valcyn that IS what is going to happen.
A huge majority of the entertainers I knew abandoned it post CU and ROTW. Who can blame them? No content whatsoever without a combat prof, and level 80 to boot.
You know, I was a master Dancer/Carbineer back at the dawn of time. We had a PA of "Combat Entertainers", we went on raids, we set raid camps and defended them, we healed mind wounds, we were needed. Now, I have sparklers, fake scimitars and and a generally empty cantina to play to.
For my two master Entertainers, give me Armor, give me a set of drums or Pipes, and let me "Inspire" a combat group while "In Combat".
....Men of Harlech, stand ye steady...
sigh. dreams.
Chessack wrote:
Muzz wrote:
The prof will be done only because the buffs will be essential, and players won't want to take the chance of travelling around to various cantinas in the hope of finding an ATK Ent who will be able to provide the buff they require.
Which is why some of us here have been asking for two years for a galaxy-wide registration system so people can check on their datapad (or wherever) and know up-to-the-minute which cantinas contain live dancers and/or musicians who can serve them. If we had this, you wouldn't need guild bots at all.
But sadly, this feature request has never even been acknowledged, much less attempted, and so we are kind of stuck. The 10% resource thingy is kind of beside the point, in actual fact. The screaming is because something we give out is perceived as "needed" now and, unlike vendors which you CAN do a global search over now to find the needed equipment, there's just no good or easy way to find us. Dump the resource thing and give us something else to buff from any other profs and you have the same problem.
If it's any good, players think they "need" it and they want it to be convenient and easy to obtain. If it's not "needed" that mostly means it is not any good, and nobody is going to want it or care about it.
The solution is not to make everything crappy and thus not needed (though that is where the Ent profs have slowly been sliding to, prior to this pub on TC). The solution is to let us have stuff that we can give out that is just as needed as your weapons or Yoss' armor, BUT... make us as easy to find as your weapons and Yoss' armor!
Maybe if we all agitate for that, everyone can be happy -- you can get what you need conveniently, because you can find us as easily as finding a resource on a vendor search, and we get to provide what we want to, a needed service to our fellow gamers.
C
That's a very good idea, it would be very handy to have ingame for all concerned.
The reason I won't be using cantinas and using 'bots' (even though ATK they will technically be bots)instead is not because I want to, but because every time I want to craft I will be forced into getting these buffs. As I am being forced to do something, I will do it in the quickest and most conventient way possible.
While I can in no wayspeak for others, I believe a fair amountwill feel the same way.
I saw the other thread got deleted, here is the response I was writing
The BioE brigade run over to the thread to take a sneaky peek.
Eyes down for starters
A a profession we are not able to hit CAP very easily. As a hardcore BioE / Medic crafter crafting EVERYTHING that we can make here are my views on the topic and how it will effect the tiems I craft.
Stims - Good for us and good for you. Our cap is well over the resources we can get mainly due to some severe resurce limitiation and caps such as herb meat. Our sub components will enjoy these chages for sure.
Pet crafting - Bad for us and Bad for you. Our pets require us to be able to experiment upto a certain % to get the correct pet level. Things like amazing sucesses make this hard as we often "fall over" the desired level and make unuseable pets so a thumbs down regarding pet crafting.
Medic items - Things like bacta toss and spray will enjoy the increased components craft as well as the final item as caps are well out of our reach currently
CM items - Some items like durt toss (fire) are really hampered by low cap on DR for titanium aliminium and the rarity of the spawn, as one of the best selling BioE med items after Stim D's the combat medics will love and increase in the power of these and thejedi in tur will hate 
Gotta love the MCM/MBH combo
DR items - of the 4 the only one usually purchased is the bacta infusion which will be liked. As for the injections for Dr to increase health and action they area mess as the power relates to the duration not the effect so a 1200 crafted will only increase buff length by about 10 mins so making better ones of these and taking it to 15 mins wont achieve anything.
Chef tissues - On a lot of servers it is already possible to make 57/87/117 MSN/BSN/INN, the cap being 60/90/120 Nowon some servers 59/89/119 are already possible due to some good post CU spawns so these guys will be hitting cap making the prduction of them one of no difficulty and remove the fun tbh
Tailor tissues - We are some wayoff some of the caps on these so may help the community and many of the resources are a bit of a pain to get so I guess the community will like and so will be a plus for Tailors also.
In summary good for the majority of the medic crafting and also good for some of the tailor tissues due to resource requirements (talking things like milk and insect meat etc as these usually spawn with crap stats and once in an age decent then usually on a planet which is really hard to harvest from like dath so we end up using crates for these normally) As for Pets its abig no no but we dont have to visit after all in that case.
Death_Blossom wrote:
After reading this thread and others, my greatest fears over these new buffs has come true. These aren't even in live yet and the hate is already there. Entertainers are going to become slaves again to the masses and buffbots will rise again. Now that the damage is done without it going to live yet, it's irrepairable.
After mastering entertainer for a second and finally mastering dancer and musician along with image designer, I felt a massive surge of pride and accomplishment for achieving one of my biggest goals.
And it's all for naught.
I gave up entertainer on one character, I don't want to give it up on another. But if this animosty and hate continues into live, there will be one less entertainer in the game.
It's not hate, it's frustration. Personally I will never project any of my frustrations onto any entertainer, it's not their fault that yet another addition to the game is poorly thought out and poorly implemented. Anyone with half a brain can understand that.
The biggest issue with this is the strength of the buffs. They are over-powered in their current state, and without sounding melodramatic this could be a disaster. It's not the sort of change that can be tweaked, it's a fundamental rewriting of how to craft. Once the cat is out of the bag it will be too late. IF it's tweaked after going live it won't just be difficult for newer crafters entering certain professions to compete, it will be plain impossible. Every crafter will have made tons of schems that will last a very very long time. The crafting community will effectively become a closed shop with regard to certain professions. And whatever your views on the current difficulties of establishing a brand name, it most definitely is not that at the moment.
Even if there hadn't been a problem with the proposed buffs nothing would be different. There was never a "decline" of bots or alts after the removal of mind buffs. They simply changed their macros. Sure some of them may have disappeared but go to any of the usual "hangouts" and you'll see a full contingent there. For every once famous bot who left (or got packed away),four more took their spot on the crowded floor. I've finally accepted that the things that made this a fun profession for me for such a long time are gone and no change will every replace them. Instead I've decided that the profession is still fun as my "down time". When I need a break from everything else, I can simply relax and enjoy myself in a blissfully empty spot in the desert or in the company of the few remaining truely entertaining dancers and musicians on Shadowfire. The fire consuming our profession was left to burn too long so whether the code prevents simple round the clock botting or not won't change anything.
As for the new inspirations I saw a few posts offering some good alternatives, not enough unfortunately but then that's nothing new. I saw ideas about reducing the complexity for factory runs thus reducing the amount needed, reducing the resource quality percentage - though an actual satisfactory number seems to be elusive, tying the profession buff to a skill box in musician and dancer so that a shortage of one particular profession at any given time didn't hamper efforts to get a buff, etc... These are all good ideas and although I'm convinced I'll probably never be a "useful" dancer again I personally think it's worth trying to work on these issues for those who do want them and think they'll help their game experience.
Muzz wrote:
Here is the problem:
ANY buff the devs give us is going to automatically fall into one of two categories: (1) so small as to make no real difference, or (2) large enough to make a difference. The first category will be ignored by the players. The second category will be considered a "requirement." There is no way to do what the devs said they want, which is give the players something they "want" but don't feel they "need." If they want it, it's by definition because they feel they need it, and we are in category #2 automatically.
So the real question here, specifics about a given buff aside, is this: Are the entertainers to be given things players want/need or not? If so, then the other players are just going to have to deal with it, in the same way entertainers have to deal with needing the clothes of the tailor or the food of the chef or the weapons of the WS (if they have a combat class besides dancing). If not, then they may as well take entertainers out of the game, because there'd not be any point to the prof.
See the problem? I mean you pretty much admitted that by definition you will never, ever use a live entertainer played by another player. If our buffs are trivial and irrelevent, you won't use them for that reason. And if our buffs are useful, you will consider them a requirement (since making stuff without them active = "sub par) and you will resort to an entertainer bot. So your position, when you boil it right down to its essence, is that entertainers as a prof should be essentially removed (for all intents and purposes, either figuratively, by having worthless buffs no one wants, or literally by deleting those profs) from the game.
Oh I know you don't *think* that's your position, but in reality, it is.
C
Panthu wrote:
Thankfully, our new buffs hardly factor into this problem at all since they can't be AFKed.
Message Edited by PoetDancer on 08-25-2005 03:33 PM