Dancer Archive

Message Edited by Warryyr on 04-05-2005 11:08 AM

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Ramona_Garcia wrote:

I think instead of a pop up menu - which can be used to annoy entertainers - a simple radial (not / command-able) "inspire" option for the dancer upon targetting a watching character would be better and less hassle.

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Hmm, yeah. The Entertainer should definitely have an option to start the inspiration process.

But again, we're back at the Entertainer giving no indication they're buffing, and people coming into a cantina yelling "Can any2 buff me plz!!!1!!!11!!" and 10 seconds later running out while you're still responding in a /tell "I'm in the back room, come back here and I'll buff you."

I would really like to see a way for a person to request a buff from an Entertainer without having to spam, beg, and plead. One very distinct thing emerged from the buffbot phenomenon - players LIKED being able to /invite a bot and KNOW the buff process had begun. The /invite put powerto requesta buff in the recipient's hands. No more yelling in a cantina for a buff the moment you walk in a door, staring a Master or5 in the face, and getting no responses. This lets people ask for the buff without being obnoxious.

And, please read what I wrote again. The /setinspire off command would automatically deny any request for inspiration, you'd never see it come up. If you get harassed in a /tell or whatever, or Spatial, /addignore, /denyservice, if it continues file a ticket just as always.

There MUST be a way to automatically reject inspiration requests for this to work. You know how people walk up to you and just do an /invite out of the blue? THEY want to initiate a buffing session and have you respond. What happens if you don't want to deal with this? You set the checkbox in your Options to "automatically reject group invitations." It's the same deal. Give people the power to initiate a buff session, and the first person to respond wins - the first person PLAYING and PAYING attention The ATK Entertainer wins everytime. And if you're performing at a gig, or don't want to buff, /setinspire off and you never know they requested a thing. They see "This Entertainer does not look very inspiring. Perhaps you should try another."

Again, don't take offense to that line, it merely tells the person you're not Inspiration buffing. It does not refer to your entertaining abilities or your performance.

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Chessack wrote:
The problem with radial menus is, as we know, they can be buggy. For example, sometimes radial/watch doesn't work but typing /watch does. Also if you have too many other abilities, the 8 available slots might be used up (with things like heal and diagnose) and you might not even see this option. So while the radial menu is a nice idea, they need to fix radial menus before it can be practical as the ONLY way to give a buff.

C

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Good point. They've adjusted droids' radial menus by creating submenus. Perhaps something similar can be achieved to allow all commands to pop up when desired.

There could be a /requestinspiration command from the customer's point of view. However, from the Entertainer's perspective, you'd need to use a radial command - no /inspire command that could be macro'd. Because we're back to buffbots, then.

Perhaps a check to see if we're skill animating, in which case if we are, our radial menus will always have Inspire as the number 2 option or something. Some other command could be bumped from the radial, but the necessary Inspire function would be there.

Stop. Slow down. Think about this.

/hug Panthu.

The voice of reason. Great point, it makes my impression of the Devs improve after the whole passive buffs fiasco.

My problem is that I remember before the buffing craze and there were 24/7 BF bots...The cantinas were full of AFK masters already, which I think is why the botting hit so hard and fast. They were already there, they just needed new macros.

What about all the ones who spam guild vendor advertisements? "Just stocked today!" They'll stay, because they have more than one function. What about the ones outside of starports that spam vendor locations and sales and already don't heal or buff? They'll still be there too..

Even if we get some sort of anti-AFK manager in NPC cantinas, every guild is still going to have an ent bot in their own cantina. People are still going to put a merchant tent (since bots will be able to have master merchant now too) 1km outside of coronet, theed, dant MO outposts and a spam droid at the starport "Come to BoB's Buff Shack just 1km! Avoid the lag of the cantina and the hassle of live ents!"

I really want to think that this would turn out nice for us to just go along and be passive and that the AFKers will go away. But I don't trust it. I know at least a few bots that don't bot just because they want the benefit of buffs/heals, but because they hate ents and want us out of "their" game, and yes I've been explicitly told that. Those people aren't leaving, they'll be there AFK until they're banned for using 3rd party programs. But why make it easier? Why justify their hate?

I also don't trust SOE to remove AFKing game wide. How possible is it to profit/level combat AFK on TC right now? I suppose I will go try it. I imagine it's darn near impossible. So no, I don't think they changed their mind about removing AFK -- I just think they only ever meant to remove it from combat and that the CU will encompass all the AFK removal they intend to worry about. Otherwise why make people go through two adjustment phases?

Yes, the passive system would work okay (though I still wouldn't really like it much, because I want to know who is watching me.. but I could live with it) if AFKing were removed. But I don't have it in me to blindly step into this with the faith that SOE will remove AFKing. I don't have it in me to miss what might be our only chance to really and truly get AFKing fixed, even if it means having to sacrifice passiveness.

We just need something simple. Like the entertainer window, or perhaps the manager idea IF it's applied to all areas where healing/buffing are possible (that means tents, houses, private cantinas, camps, faction bases, hotels, cantinas, taverns....). Otherwise people are going to just fall into the same routine, and no one will break the bot habit. Because a bot will STILL be more convenient than a live person. It will STILL be in the same spot 24/7 and it will STILL be free and it will STILL service any one and every one, even the little jerk who fondles it and the live novice next to it for good measure.

• Not all Devs have the same opinions and ideas on how Entertainer should actually work, they do all like us though, this makes us more of a "pet project" and it is important to remember that if you are seeing any thing coming down for us it is because some Dev has fought other Devs and suits to push his own vision of us through. ... This is a nice thing that should earn him a thank you, not name calling.


• When we say "no" to something the Devs have offered us in the past, they do not say "oh, ok, how can we do that better?" and come back with another proposal the next day and over and over again until we are pleased..... no, no, no, it doesn't work that way for us. When we stop something in an early stage, it stops period. We don't hear about it again. ... Why do we work like this? See above.

We aren't like Combat, there are not universal concepts for us andprovenRight Answers for Social profs. There are many ways we could be improved and it is getting a little silly if we don't start letting some things be done for us when the Devs are willing to do them and can.

Just, please, keep this in mind...

Ya know, Panthu, you've been shedding more light on the real workings of what's going on behind the scenes of our development than any other dev or correspondent, and I thank you for that. I also wonder how long it's going to be before the folks at SOE put a contract out on you for it.

The problem is that that light is a dim one and this one statement pretty much says it all:

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* Not all Devs have the same opinions and ideas on how Entertainer should actually work, they do all like us though, this makes us more of a "pet project" and it is important to remember that if you are seeing any thing coming down for us it is because some Dev has fought other Devs and suits to push his own vision of us through.

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Now granted we have often thought that the devs have no real "grand design" for us, but I know that I've always had the hope that there really was some bigger plan they've had in mind, and just haven't had the chance to prioritize it into action. Apprently there is nothing going on behind the scenes for us other than the occasional dev idea that somehow accidentally escapes into actual production. If there's no real plan for what we are to be and what our role is in the game, then it seems to me that all we'll ever be is a mish-mash of random ideas and half-implemented plans. As much as we should appreciate the effort that those devs who do try to come up with ideas to enhance our game (whoever they are) and moreso to those who make them happen, if we're nothing more than a "pet project" then we really are second-class professions and will continue to be until they finally get it together and create a formal plan for us or decide to eliminate us altogether.

(WARNING! - off topic sentimental flashback ahead - feel free to skip to next paragraph)

When I first got this game I had no clue what to expect or what it would be like. I pretty much just liked the idea of Star Wars in a multiplayer online format and decided to dive in despite the fact that none of my other friends seemed interested in trying it. I was initially surprised to find no space component to it whatsoever, and a description of profession choices that to me, at least, didn't sound all that "Star Warsy" except smuggler and the vague promise of Jedi. The rest seemed to be pretty much standard variants on healers, long range fighters, short range fighters and whatnot. One of the ones that did stand out to me as something maybe a little different and I wanted to try though, was Dancer, if for no other reason than my RL hobbies and to see what it was like. I had no idea of any concept of "social professions", had never played "The Sims Online", and my only other MMORPG experience was EQ. As it turned out it was in some ways more than I expected and in others less. 'Less' because the game role was rather limited, not a greatly sought after profession (I don't think I was ever invited into a hunting group for my dance skills), and despite all my expectations and optimism, I realized there was no real Entertainer content in the game. 'More' because despite the shortcomings, it turned out that other players and especially other Entertainer players are very social, friendly, and fun people (I never experienced this in EQ, and never expected it here), our dance/music skills, even if largely 'fluff', are kinda cool, and there are some really great people out there who do appreciate what we try to add to the game even if most players are perfectly happy with their bots or would prefer to see us eliminated altogether. Since then I've become active here on the forums and gotten to know an even larger community of fellow ents. For now, it's that sense of community, and no doubt a sense of stubbornness, that's really keeping me as an entertainer otherwise I think I would have cut my losses long ago and tried becoming something more 'useful' in the game or started my own Jedi grind.

Err ... ummmm ... I suppose that all this has nothing really to do with the point of this thread so ... umm ... In regard to many of the suggestions I have seen in this thread, all this talk of buff windows and radial menu options all just seem to me to be complications on what we already have now - the /setperformance command. Why do we need any more than a /tell or /say from a customer to request a buff? Why do we need more than /setperformance to give it? Maybe a radial option in addition to the /setperformance command would be handy. As far as the bot argument, the bots don't work by using /setperformance, they work by using the passive group option which may or may not still be present with the proposed new buff system (it's simply made irrelevant if buffs become entirely passive). The difference to the current system is that passive group buffs must be removed, and perhaps the /setperformance command should be able to be applied to more than one person at a time. Even if they can automate the /setperformance command, it probably won't work nearly as conveniently as their macros do now (though maybe I'm wrong on this). The only addition I might like to see is a maybe a persistent buff window where we could add or remove (or activate/deactivate) names to control the buffing process. It might be something like the group window where everyone in the window is receiving a buff, and we can selectively add or remove people from it.

My other comment would be that a lot of the argument in some of these threads continues to revolve around methods to try to disable or at least inhibit bots. If the devs would honor their promise to eliminate the recursive macros or otherwise eliminate AFK play, we wouldn't be discussing all these various methods to try to adapt our skills to make them bot-proof or bot-resistant or be debating on how useful upcoming changes might be with respect to the "bot factor".

*sigh*

I think I've done enough damage for now...

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Panthu wrote:

Some Devs have said that a Cantina Salary could be placed on Player Cantinas as well. Some say NPC Cantinas only. Some say a limited form could be put on Player Cantinas.

It is stopping the process completely if we don't even get it to a point where they can give this to us on the NPC Cantinas though.

... much like we stopped the Dev process on giving us pop-ups and interactive flo requests to help combat AFK when they offered the first step in that and we said no. Now people are asking for that, something we could have had a year ago. *shakes head* Please, work with the Devs to help us. We are a beloved pet project, it's important to grasp that.

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We NEED to give this a chance.

And we need to push for it to apply fully to player cantinas. That way not only will player cantinas be viable again, but more importantly, it hel stop those mega lag sinks in coronet and theed.

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Ihareo wrote:

Lookpeople, they are just not going to do anything about AFKers, leave it alone. It was a hard pill for me to swallow as well, butgnawing on that old bone is just going to drive away any hope for a better future.

We all read what Panthu said about why the last coorospondant quit. We all read where it was stated that the only DEV who was on board with us about the AFKers ALSO wanted to get rid of entertainers all together along with recursive macros.

The cause is lost. And all we can do is support ATK entertainers any way we can. But if we don't support this, we will cut our own throats. Why do you think so many coors have been in here trying to get us to calmdown andaccept some changes? I'll bet dimes to doughnuts that it's because the DEVs are about fed up with our unwillingness to accept any solution other than the extreme radical, and are gearing up to smack us down if we don't accept SOMTHING.

Also, things cannot change for the better without changing! You like the way it is now? Neither do I, but costantly freaking out and backpeddeling whenever a change is proposed only keeps things in a state of stasis, and we all know that stagnant water soon goes fowl and indrikable.

Everytime somthing changes for the better, it changes somthing. Simple fact of the universe.

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