Dancer Archive
Thread: Castaspella's Call for Change
Yes, and I have no problem assisting the combat professions or any other profession as long as it's done within the social setting. The objection was implementing things in game that are designed to take us OUT of the social setting and into the combat (or any other) setting.
As for what we can craft, I think that's pretty easy. They keep talking about dancing props and how they want to implement them. Guess who should be the only ones to craft them...
I also like the idea of dancers getting access to special schematics for clothing, but I think it should be a reward for a mission/quest (maybe help out our missions?) and you should have to take it to a tailor to have them create that item for you. They should also be 1-up schematics, not mass-producable.
- J
I will only speak to my personal reasons for choosing to be a master dancer and not a master commando. I wanted to play a viable character that did not require me to engage in combat. I wanted to play a social class. I wanted to wear pretty clothes. I wanted attention and I wanted people to come to me to see me perform.
Because the entertainer professions were included in SWG, I bought the game. I didn't want to be an artisan or craft things. I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to play a party girl and I got my wish with SWG.
I submit (with humor in mind) that you suggest that image designers be able to wash hair and do facials in combat as a way to boost the minds and fighting abilities of soldiers on the battlefield. 
Your 'sparse support', if you are referring to N-Kita, is doing you no favors. By all means, have an opinion and debate it. That person, however, decided to read the thread and then draw some wildly inaccurate conclusions, and then post a flame on the basis of the words they thrust into the mouths of others. I can abide by civilized conversation, and you are a great example of a civil debater, but I will not sit by and watch people get flamed for things they didn't even say.
As for being "narrow-minded", that's unfair. If you are arguing that people are narrow minded simply because they do not agree with you broadening our profession to include some combat abilities, then perhaps you are being narrow-minded by not including Jedi capabilites in your wish list. It's not being narrow-minded. I think there are very useful things one can put into the game to take dancers beyond "eye candy", but that don't take us onto the field of battle. I'm not against making us useful, fun and exciting to play. I'm against turning every aspect of this game into combat like every other MMOG out there. I want to see this profession stay a social one and improve us within that realm. The mind buffs are a perfect example. We apply them in a cantina or a camp, not on a field of battle, but they added a lot to our profession.
In addition to useful functionality which enables us to participate in the larger world, eye-candy IS also important, and a large part of our profession, so don't discount it so easily. It's also a large part of the game. For example, while tailors can make clothing with stats, 90% of what they make is eye candy. Architects make furniture, most of which serves no purpose whatsoever, except as eye candy. I know people who agonize over their houses and cities, trying to make them look beautiful and inviting. People put together fireworks shows that serve no discernable purpose other than looking cool. Eye candy is part of what makes games fun and interesting. Eye candy enables roleplaying. It should not be discounted out of hand.
- J
Sirgleno wrote:
Wow, so much to say...
1. Don't pick on my sparse support, while I knew what I was up against beginning this post, it is inappropriate for board members to rip apart the first person to point out that they see some board members as "narrow-minded". And while this "narrow-mindedness" is debatable, it is true that they want to limit the scope of the dancing profession to not include any abilities that they do not think fit for a dancer. Cuit said “I'm not gonna mention combat stuff cause I can tell people don't like it.” This board is nothing short of intimidating to most people who share my views. Of course we all want changes, Sultrina's "Dream Works" being a notable call for change that seems to cater to the "eye-candiers", and this thread being at the other end of the suggestion spectrum.
"They didn't rip them apart by any stretch of the imagination, they only pointed out that there was nothing narrow-minded about their point of view and if anything the person making that comment was the narrow-minded one."
2. Our correspondent said:
"All I'm going to say on this matter is that there is no chance in hell of Dancers getting Bard like abilities. The Devs have said repeatedly they do not want the Entertainer professions to be like Bards in any way. And no I'm not going to go digging through posts trying to find those posts for you, thats your problem not mine. This is a social class that never will have a role in combat.. now if you have any good ideas of things to add to make the profession more fun that are not combat oriented, feel free to share them, otherwise your just wasting board space."
Wow, since when is it reasonable for you to suggest that threads which advocate views that are counter to the posting community are a waste of space. Truthfully I find most of the threads on the Dancing forums quite boring, if you don't want to participate in the discussion fine, but to refer to (imo) the most interesting thread on this board in quite some time a waste of space is uncool.
Actually this is really a boring and old subject if you ask me personally. I don't see whats so intresting about a topic thats been brought up more times then I can remember now. And don't just go by that one post of Holo's, there are others if you take the time to look that state flat out they don't want us being anything like Bards and won't be getting Bard Like abilities. So yes bringing it up for the 100th time is pretty much wasting space on these boards. I don't mean to be an ass but thats just the reality of it. (I love Bard like characters btw but thats just not what they want us to be like) And once again, no I'm not going to do the work for you and find the posts, that is your problem.
Castaspella Perfect
I'm all for new ideas and discussion but beating a dead horse just gets boring after a while. If you have some ideas that are not bard like in any way then I'd love to hear them. You should note on my issues list I even include a part about adding some non bard like abilities. I don't want to discourage you from bringing up your ideas but when they don't pan out you need to learn to accept that and move on, and not just discount it by saying, "well its only the vocal minority." The truth is its the vocal majority in this case and you just don't want to admit that. Perhaps there are many more with your perspective that don't post on these boards but the fact is, if they don't care enough to help out by posting on these boards their opinion doesn't matter.
Sorry if I come across as harsh, I don't really mean to be. I wish more people would contribute to these boards to give me a larger view on how the people I represent feel but on some issues theres really little point. I'd be a lot more supportive of your idea if the devs hadn't already shot it down. I've been supportive and am supportive of a lot of ideas I don't agree with, but I want everyone to have a voice on the issues. I hope you can understand why some things just aren't worth the time tho.
Maybe we could clarify what counts as eye-candy and how that links to being social. Effects like /dazzle are pure eye-candy without any effect on the game world. Dancing is not eye-candy, as it has an effect ( healing ) on the game world. Socializing doesn't neccessarily mean standing around chatting. It means interacting with people in a friendly or roleplaying manner, maybe helping them through various ways of in game or ooc skills or knowledge.
What I would like to see is
- More eye candy ( Artistic stuff ? )
- More useful skills ( crafting dancing props ? )
What I would not like to see is
- combat related skills
- other skills that might harm people
We are entertainers. Besides that, we have 2 other masteries. If you want to be a trumpeteer for the imperial army, you can be just that, a Master Musician, Master Marksman, Master (combat class). A fighting entertainer. However, there has never been a fightertainer that somehow fought and entertained at the same time. And the more developed a civilization gets, the more obsolete these trumpeteers get. Not because the trumpet sounds worse, but because the trumpet was never used for entertainment in the first place, but for relaying information in chaotic environments. Sound the attack signal. No one will dance to that and feel refreshed.
Bards are a relict from the past. They fit into magic RPG environments with castles and princes and dragons. But not into a scientific world with laser rifles and planet-to-planet-communication.
So anyone who wants to play this way, great... you have enough skillpoints left to do what I described above and become the imperial herald. However, someone who wants to be an entertainer should not get combat upgrades for the entertainer class. Thats like giving my Riflemen dancing skills.... heck, I need a fixed profession, not some silly dance. To each class new skills. Combat skills for the combateers and "eye candy" or socializer skills for the entertainers.
**Side note, is there any way to focus the dev tracker on the Dancer board? As I went back quite a ways in there and didn't see anything about the future of Dancers.
Casta
Since we're all entertainers... I'd like to start with a verse from a song.
"There ain't no bad guy. There ain't no good guy. There's only you and me and we just disagree!"
My apologies if my wording was offensive. However, the general feeling I get from these boards is thatthey are made up of a handful of like minded individuals. Our corespondant is among this group. Any opinions not shared by this group seem to be considered minority opinions and are dismissed.
My fear, and the only reason I started posted on these forums, is that the devs are going to let this group of peoplemold the dancing profession into what they want it to be. I feel the only way to avoid this is to voice strong support for those who share my views.
Raven - I admire you for taking on the task of being the correspondant. I don't know how you were chosen, frankly I don't care, and I certainly wouldn't want to do the job myself. Which is why my only criticism (if you can call it that) has been that you need to express both sides of heated issues. Like everyone on this board, you are entitled to your opinion, but the more you allow it to be seen the harder it is for those not in your school of thought to trust you as a bipartisan representative. Add to this your choice of wording in this post and it would appear that you are attempting to make decisions on what the devs see or don't see based on your personal opinions. Again - I'm not trying to criticize you - just pointing out how you are coming across. I hope that you will take this into consideration.
As for everyone elseas I said, I am sorry for being offensive. My intent was to voice my anger, not to resort to childish name calling or "he said, she said" games. I would like to share with you all my vision on Entertainers of the GCW... you may find that it isn't what you expect, and some of you might like it! 
More later.
Sirgleno wrote:
And while this "narrow-mindedness" is debatable, it is true that they want to limit the scope of the dancing profession to not include any abilities that they do not think fit for a dancer.
There are degrees to narrow-mindedness.
Certainly, there is the bad kind of narrow-mindedness, which stymies good debate: "No one should be allowed to use flesh wraps because I don't think others should wear them." That is one person's opinion getting in the way of another person's opinion. One valid dancer style is one of elegance and grace and full dresses. Another valid dancer style is one of tantalizing flesh and rhythmic gyrations. So to step on the toes of one of these styles is narrow-minded, and it is IMO harmful.
There is also the narrow-mindedness which keeps us focused: "We should focus only on those abilities that make sense for Dancers. To introduce outrageous concepts would destroy our sense of identity." Introducing combat moves would be one such suggestion. Other incongruent suggestions would be things like blinding an enemy with /spot or taming an aggressive creature with our charm. In this sense, I don't consider this "narrow-mindedness" to be harmful. Quite the opposite: Trying to be too broad is what is being harmful.
So that's why I speak out against the combat moves. Other aspects, I can respect, such as fatigue healing in camps or getting XP for healing your own BF, because they are valid suggestions for the class of Dancer. I may disagree with those arguments, but I cannot deny that they are great suggestions for bettering our profession.
Don't view it as bigoted narrow-mindedness. View it as a challenge to you to convince us that combat features are valid for a profession dedicated to being a background character. I've seen no compelling reasons to thrust the Dancer into combat. It doesn't make sense historically, and I've seen very little literature outside of the fantastic that even addresses this.
So, Ravenmist, how about those spot lights and colored lights? Think one of the animators can give us some new pretty lights for these? They are awfully dry when you pick them up at Technique I and see them all the way through IV.
Sirgleno wrote:
OK Raven, can you define bard-like?
Using music/dance in combat to buff/debuff/harm/heal.
Also, I went back quite a ways in the message board to revive a similar thread instead of creating my own, and was unable to find one, so this concept is hardly beating a dead horse,
Actually, it IS a dead horse. Do an advanced search for postings with the words "combat entertainer" in the subject and you'll find out that it's a topic that goes all the way back to launch day. You'll probably find more threads on the entertainer forum than the dancer/musician forums but all three forums have had them show up at one time or another. Curiously, the starters of the threads are generally split evenly between melee types who want a bard in the group and entertainers who want something to do in combat so they feel useful to their guildmates.
The quintessential argument goes like this - "Hey, dancers have that smoke bomb effect. They ought to be able to use that in combat to distract the enemy. And that dazzle effect could be a blind and firejet could burn the enemy..."
especially when there are individuals who are as passionate about it as me.
Passion is good but it doesn't automatically legitimize your ideas.
Further, I would think that if you are making claims such as that the Devs have said that the dancers will never have "bard-like" abilities, then the burden of support would be yours.
That's only true if the person cares about convincing you. Ravenmist has made it perfectly clear that he knows how things are and that what you believe concerning the intentions of the developers is your business.
I'll just say this - I'm a correspondent. Ravenmist is a correspondent. I don't know if Ravenmist was around for beta, but I was and I participated in the developer discussions back then about what the profession(s) were about. We're both telling you that the developer intention for entertainers is that they are a "socializer" profession. As correspondents we're privy to a certain amount of developer interaction that we don't discuss with non-correspondents. You have to take it on faith that when Ravenmist says the developers will never turn entertainers into bards that he knows whereof he speaks.
If it's any comfort, all of us (Me, Ravenmist and NewJedi) have communicated these desires for entertainers to be more generally "useful" to the developers. If you go to the entertainer forum and read my "State of the profession" thread, you'll see that I saw fit to include it there, even though I'm 100% behind Ravenmist on what he says.
You're not being "shouted down by a vocal minority". The problem is that nobody has managed to come up with any sorts of skills that would make any kind of logical sense without using magic. Citing drummers and bagpipers in historical combat is a smokescreen. Musical instruments were adapted to warfare because they were the most efficient way to communicate signals between regiments over long distances. Nobody can come up with any rationale at all for dancers to be plying their trade in combat except for some half-hearted comparisons of dancing to certain martial arts styles. That last item is actually in the game, in the shape of the +7 melee defense bonus that master dancers get.
Combat skills for entertainers will never be implemented. Ever. If you want to be an entertainer and be on the front lines then you need to get novice marksman and pick up a CDEF.
Sirgleno, I'm sorry that it feels like you're being raked over the coals but this conversation is as old as the game. Tons of people want BF healing in camps and have suggested such. Many people DO want entertainers to be bards and suggest all kinds of weird magical abilities with no good explanation for why they would exist. Lots of people want entertainers to be turned into some kind of "mind medic" where we craft stims that are used to heal mind in battle. People want to be able to make recordings and sell them as portable entertainment. The fact that you couldn't find the previous discussions doesn't change the fact that we've had them over and over.
If you really want to turn this into a constructive thread, then let's start over and drop the whole combat idea. It's just not going to happen. Focus on other abilties that you think the profession could benefit from that derive logically or at least sensibly from their current focus and abilities.
And, just to reassure (though maybe it's not really reassuring) the "vocal people" on these forums are not nearly as influential as y'all seem to believe they are. The correspondents are a funnel and not much more. We sometimes get asked for input on dev ideas but the devs have no problem pointing out that we AND our forums represent a minority of the game population, not a majority. Most of the people who play the game never even look at the forums.
Finally, you can feel fortunate that Ravenmist always gives a balanced viewpoint when he reports to the devs. He (and likewise, myself and Newjedi) might preface an opinion with "I don't agree with this but the people on my forum feel this way..." but he always reports what is going on in the Dancer forum. All three of us (and pretty much all of the correspondents in general) are interested in improving the game, not in pushing our own personal agendas.
Sirgleno wrote:
OK Raven, can you define bard-like? Also, I went back quite a ways in the message board to revive a similar thread instead of creating my own, and was unable to find one, so this concept is hardly beating a dead horse, especially when there are individuals who are as passionate about it as me. Further, I would think that if you are making claims such as that the Devs have said that the dancers will never have "bard-like" abilities, then the burden of support would be yours.
**Side note, is there any way to focus the dev tracker on the Dancer board? As I went back quite a ways in there and didn't see anything about the future of Dancers.
Casta
I'm not going to go back and look that far for a post, I just don't have the time for that. I will see if maybe I can talk a Dev into posting thier stance on Entertainers again tho to refresh peoples memory but they may not want to. Also this was a very popular topic the first month or two the game came out with lots of posts about it, I guess it has been a while since it was brought up tho. I guess to me it feels like a dead issue especially after the Dev posts that brought most debate to a stop, but for some that haven't been reading these boards long I suppose it wouldn't feel that way.
As far as non Bard like goes.. that a tough one. Basically if it has anything to do with something the entertainer is doing somehow actively altering the battle by making the group stronger/enemy weaker its not going to fly. I've tried to get us a few things mid ground in the past that where borderline bardish just to make people like you happy but the Devs shot it down without blinking.
N_Kita wrote:
My apologies if my wording was offensive. However, the general feeling I get from these boards is thatthey are made up of a handful of like minded individuals. Our corespondant is among this group.
Which is why my only criticism (if you can call it that) has been that you need to express both sides of heated issues. Like everyone on this board, you are entitled to your opinion, but the more you allow it to be seen the harder it is for those not in your school of thought to trust you as a bipartisan representative. Add to this your choice of wording in this post and it would appear that you are attempting to make decisions on what the devs see or don't see based on your personal opinions. Again - I'm not trying to criticize you - just pointing out how you are coming across. I hope that you will take this into consideration.
If you read my issues threads and my posts in the past in general I think its fairly obvious I do my best to represent both sides and always will. You read my posts and ignorantly think just because I'm shooting down an idea its because I disagree with it. I've got a news flash for you, I freekin love bards and I wish there was a class like them in the game. (no don't tell me squad leaders, their broke and not that bard like anyway) The fact is tho there isnt and is not going to be and the developers made that clear to me a long time ago. So when I'm shooting down this idea, explaining to you the whole freekin time its because the Devs don't want it, why can't you get a grasp on the fact that that is the reason I'm shooting it down?
When it comes to heated debates I almost always stay out of them and observe, I see which side has the most support but if there isn't an obvious Majority I won't even touch the issue. If its divided 60/40 or 50/50 then its not something I'm going to mess with period. What I'm going to push and focus on are the things that most of the profession can agree on and I think thats fairly obvious if you read my issues threads or most my posts.
So lets get the facts straight here, You obviously don't have a clue what my personal opinion is on this subject. Perhaps you should read more closely before making statements that arent' true or at least ask if you really want my opinion. In no part of this thread did I offer my opinion on if we should have bard like abilities. So please don't go on making statements based on lack of knowledge and ignorance. I'm not making any decisions for our profession here, the decision has already been made by the Devs, end of freeking story okay?
Ravenmist, I haven't been a regular on this board as long as you have, and I can understand your frustration at my "beating of a dead horse", but please, for the love of the community, don't be so hostile.
Sirgleno wrote:
I for one, and I'm sure many others, would love to see some official word on the current view of the scope of the Dancer profession.
Ravenmist, I haven't been a regular on this board as long as you have, and I can understand your frustration at my "beating of a dead horse", but please, for the love of the community, don't be so hostile.
I don't see anything hostile about my posts.. they may be blunt but I don't think their hostile. Perhaps my frustration lately is showing more then I realized tho. I thought my last post to you was pretty nice tho, definately nothing hostile about that. I think the only one I've been hostile at all toward was that other poster infering that I'm not as impartial as I should be. 
Anyway, I'll see if I can twist an arm and get them to post so people that haven't been around as long can see their policy toward entertainers again.
I really don't see my posts as hostile tho, with the exception of "maybe" that one but that wasn't even to you, hehe. Perhaps your being a little to sensitive? I'm trying to be as helpful as I can be here and I really don't want to scare you off. Believe it or not we happen to share a similar opinion on this topic, I may be a little to blunt tho when it comes to telling people the reality of the situation. I'll try to be more careful about how I phrase things. People that have been on these boards a long time will tell you in general I'm a really tolerant and patient person.. unless you really tick me off that is.. which you haven't so don't worry. 
Last month or two have been pretty frustrating for Correspondants with all the resources and focus being on the Player Cities, Mounts and Vehicles we've been basically spinning our wheels. Luckily the vehicles will be out soon, "finally" and maybe we can start getting something accomplished again. Hopefully in the mean time I won't take my frustration out on ya'll too much but no promises. If I get a little bitchy sometimes I hope ya'll can forgive me, hehe.