Dancer Archive
Thread: Pro/Anti AFK/Bot/Macro All Purpose Sticky
Padtai wrote:
I keep trying to move the discussion forward but it spins backwards because I think some people just don't get it.I think they enjoy this as some alternative type of PVP or something, but I wish they would realize this isn't the place for that. Baicca, I think you're one of those people. If you aren't, then really, answer my questions.
Message Edited by Dreamland on 11-09-2004 11:13 AM
I know that there is an /addignore function in the game, but all it does is ignore, it doesn't actually solve anything. It won't make the rude player less rude to others, nor will the spammer stop with spamming. I just won't see it anymore.
When I am in a group and made leader I will ask those who use text in their macro to remove them. Some do, but the majority just send me hatetells and I boot them from the group and put them on ignore. Yet when I talk to players the majority gets annoyed with AFK Entertainers begging for tips and healing. So I'm not the only one who thinks spamming texts and begging for tips/healing is counterproductive.
I also am puzzled why an AFK entertainer comes back ATK and complains about not receiving any tips. When they start to beg for tips I usually ask if they are a beggar or an entertainer? If you are a beggar then you don't need to be in an entertainer group. Of course, I get a lot of flak for this. I do understand that people might get upset, and I've been accused of being a snob and an elitist. Well not really, but I care for the profession, eventhough I'm not so much active on the forums (too depressing really), and if you are an entertainer then that's what you should do. Macroing your dance is not entertaining, mastering your profession afk is not mastering it at all. Seems a lot of the people I now meet have either forgotten how to entertain or were never taught properly.
Many also seem to think that spamming text, asking for tips and healing is normal because everyone else does it. It's just another example they follow, and never questioned for themselves whether this is good or bad. If you ask the average player, it's bad. Many are happy to even find an ATK Entertainer. Though there are also those who are so used to afk entertainers that they just come in, get healed and leave without saying a word. They don't even respond to my welcome.
But those to blame for this situation are the devs alone. They made it possible for people to macro afk, they made it possible to afk this profession and they even make it possible for people to continue their grind. Not for the holo, but now for fs.
But my first impression after a 3 month wintersleep, after spending several days in the Coronet cantina, has showed me that the majority of entertainers don't really know what it means to be an entertainer. And that saddens me. I try to give them advice, send them to the dancer forums and can only hope they catch on.
Baciacca wrote:
Isleh wrote:
Baciacca wrote:
Running a buff-bot is a right to use ingame mechanics that everybody equally posesses.
Buff-bots are convenient and dependable when the ATK entertainers are not. Buff-bots can function during the off-peak hours when there are not a lot of ATK buffers online.
The underlying game features that allow buff-bots to function are utilized by every profession in some form. Getting rid of those features is not an option.
If that's what you want, sign up for the test center where the frogs can dispense buffs with a mouse click.
I am not unsympathetic to you dilemma Baciacca, but you've probably used the chat channels to find a solo group and the search feature to find training, why not us it to find a dancer buffing. What do you do when you can't find a doctor to buff?
First off Baciacca, I'm not accusing you of anything. Just trying to see where you are coming from.
No, I've never used the chat channels to find a solo group. We have an AT-ST group that runs 24/7 out of a house with a toon that runs a /invite macro as leader of the group. This will be destroyed with the end of recursive macros. I don't use the search feature to find training. I use the trainers. There is never a time when I can't find a doctor to buff because there are 2 different friend's accounts that I can log on who are master doctors.
May I ask, Why do you even bother to play a MMORPG with the great lengths you go to avoid other people? Seems odd for a MMORPG you've shut yourself off completly from other people. You could probably go for days logging in your friends accounts and a buffbot and solo grind alone. Then only meet your current friends. Don't you wish for meeting other people out side your group of close friends?
The entire point of BF was to bring the players together in the cantinas. Entertainers were suppose to be the catalyst. But now, Player Cities disperse the player population to much and buffbots and spam destroy the social atmosphere.
I would argue that whining entertainers ruin the atmosphere. I'd rather see a bot's spam than an entertainer whining about not getting tips.
Bots don't complain when they've been shortchanged or stiffed do they? Have you tried tipping for the serviceentertainers provided you? How often have you lurked near the back door of a cantina to get a quick heal free of charge? Regardless, in either case of the entertainer begging for tips or the bot spam, I'm sure no one is at the controls.
You say off hours there are not enough entertainers but that's not true because I've had the wonderful oppunitity to chat with people around the globe. What do you think ATK entertainers do when you can't move while skill animating and in a group of 20 people? Unfortunatly, most of those conversations had to be done in group chat or tells and you never got a chance to chime in with "Hey! I love that song too!" because of:
Yes, it is true. You may play on a larger server where there are always entertainers around in every city, but on my server there are rarely ever entertainers buffing in coronet during the prime hours, let alone the off-peak hours.
How would you know? Sounds likeyou never go to the cantinas anymore. The few players who may have triedbeing an entertainerhave probably given up because their customers have set up buffbots and never needtheir service. What server do you play on?
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
Isleh-lin Mott greets you
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
"Hi Baciacca" Isleh-lin Mott says warmly
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
"So, looks like you had a rough day Baciacca" Isleh-lin Mott says with concern
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Isleh-lin Mott wishes Baciacca well and hopes to see him soon.
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
"If I'm not in a group, please invite me" yells AFKerOne
"If I'm low on action" says AFKerTwo "Please heal me!"
AFKerThree Shouts "Please tip me. I'm poor"
Buffbot says "After the Buff, please disband. If you are group leader, please invite others."
Isleh-lin Mott Sighs
Hmmm, and you think that these people wouldn't run the same recursive macro if they were actually at their keyboard?
Ya think? For the most part, they are AFK. They may glance over to the laptop to see how their buffbot is coming along but they are somewhere else. Watching TV or playing their main. They may occasionally drop in to see if the macro is broke, but that's it.
Being AFK has nothing to do with it at all, it's all about the macros that these people have chosen to use. That's what the /addignore feature is for, or better yet, the ignore all AFK players feature is for. You can't complain about hearing spammers because you have the option to not listen to them. It's no one's fault but your own if they are annoying you.
You assume that AFKers put up AFK. As soon as the "Ignore all AFK players" feature came out.Spammers just stopped putting up AFK when spamming.All the buffbots I've seen do not put the ( AFK ) up so they are not ignored. Do you put AFK up for your buffbot?
/addignore.is just treating the symptom. Itdoesn't stop the cause. Nor does it help me after the fact that you missed me greeting you because of the spam. I may have the spammers on the ignore list but do you as soon as you walk into the cantina? Are you even going to bother?
One final thought Baciacca.
I was asked to drop everything I was doing to go and buff about 15-20 people with a musician friend who going into the deathwatch bunker. Each of those people were suppose to tip me 10k for dropping what I was doing and going to endor to mind buff this group of kitted power players.
I did so and they short changed me so bad that the musician friendtipping me 100k. And no, I did not complain, I just silently resolved that I wasn't going to do that again.
I went out of my way and you think this is"Whiny"? It took an hour to get this group on their way and 10k is a drop in the bucket for these type of power players.
Padtai wrote:
I keep trying to move the discussion forward but it spins backwards because I think some people just don't get it.I think they enjoy this as some alternative type of PVP or something, but I wish they would realize this isn't the place for that. Baicca, I think you're one of those people. If you aren't, then really, answer my questions.
1) Just how available should bonuses like buffs and skills like healing be?
The developers must have had some idea about how much downtime and how valuable they wanted the skills of entertainers (and doctors) to be. There's a reason they didn't put up npc's to heal or heck, put in wounds at all. That reason, my guess, is to give value to the skills while creating challenges for the combat players to overcome. Now maybe the developers underestimated how many people would play each role, and how hard the challenge would be. If that is true, then perhaps they need to evaluate whetherthey remove wounds/fatigue, and add blue frogs or npcs to provide some alternative healing, or let players have mechanics to provide some off-line healing that results from online play (the way crafted goods work). What they decide to do doesn't matter that much, but ultimately, we all need to acknowledge the concept that games need balances to them. I know the developers did not expect the amount of AFK that we currently have in the game. I know they don't "like " it, and I know that part of that must be because we are pushing the limits of the balance they designed into the game. The same way we all had fun fixing disabled bikes with a shuttle hop. Doesn't make sense to disable the darn thing if you pay nothing to get it fixed, does it? Doesn't give value to artisan skills to make new ones, if no one really needs new bikes? Sure its less convenient to have to buy new ones, but convenience for the combat player is not the only goal of the game. So the question of just how available buffs and healing has to be answered carefully. The more available you make them, the less they operate as strategy pre and post battle, and more just as affecting it during battle. That's not necessarily bad, but it does make the game a lot less complex.
That leads to my next question:
2) Do you feel it is necessary to get value out of an unattened character? Do you feel it is necessary for that character to be *online* while you get the benefits from it? Could you be satisifed with something like merchant if it were part of the balance of the supply or buffs/heals and gaining expeirence? Or is most of the appeal of owning a bot ( or using or playing AFK ) tied up in the fact that its like fixing a disabled bike, that you know it is a way to get around the limits of the game?
This is not about how available we want buffs to be, but about why you have an alt in the first place. This question is also not about the role of entertainers, which I will ask in the third set. Let's imagine we turned every ticket collector into a buffer that could heal and buff 200% of your mind and body for 3 hours. You would no longer need your bot, would you? Would you threaten SOE not to make this change because you would cancel your account? Or would you just cheer the change and cancel? Does anyone out there really bot because they enjoy it, and if so, are there so many of those players that SOE needs to be careful in addressing the "shortage" solutions that they preserve a role for the "bot owners"? Or can we say these people are just cheaters who shouldn't be accomodated in a working game? How valuable is the need to AFK one's way to getting experience and rewards, compared to some solution built around offline play (such as holo vids recorded by live players, displayed through terminals or merchant vendors...lots of ideas, that's just a general sketch)?
That leads to my final questions:
3) The devleopers wanted to have a social game included in the package of SWG. How can we fix thse two classes to be fun to play, without creating shortages or inconveniences for other classes, to encourage the active player who wants to be social? What elements of this class appeal to those who play it?
As an entertainer, do you want to be useful to combat, or do you not care as long as you have something to make money from the system? Do you like being a healer? Do you want some more "active" quest type activities like the theater quests as a way to get experience (instead of just costing it)? Do you worry about retaining the freedom to dance/play music how you want rather than how the system wants? Do you not care about the dance/music, so long as you can chat?
Now notice, none of these questions relate to the idea of preserving the value for the unattened alt. I think if unattened alts must have value, then a social gamer's class is the *worst* possible choice. As people have noted,playing a role that a zombie can play pretty much ruins the social interaction part of the game. We can't have entertainer be *automated*, but we can find other ways to make buffs/heal available and ways (if we must) to give value to unattened alts, though I strongly would prefer minimal online time roles like merchant to get people to log off and free the servers up. We've been going around in circles because the current game puts all three questions inside the same class and obviously, what serves the needs of one set of players comes at the expense of another set.
Now some of you out there will read my questions and say why? Things work great now, but that's the point, they only work for you. Or say, why, if we could just get rid of the bots, things would work great for you. Again, only for you, someone else's game might become (in their minds) "unplayable." Well when that happens, we all lose, even if we think we win. We lose a game that has broader appeal than to just those who like to play the way we do. SOE actually did want dancers/musicians in the game as they spent money to motion capture moves, compose songs and they didn't have to do that if all they wanted was a bunch of afk bots. They also didn't want tons of down time either, because why have weapons if you are always sitting down healing?Face it: We loseWhen other people are having fun around you, that catches on. If everyone walks around complaining, that catches on too. Seriously, are you happy walking into a cantina to use a robot to buff you, or would you rather just be pre-buffed and skip the bot? I mean, that is an option you know if the dev's give it to us. Or are you happy buffing someone who's gone AFK the moment they stepped inside the cantina because they dont' want to talk to you, who grumbles about it and resents it? I'm not sure what a better option there is, but let's think of something. What we have now doesn't work and wouldn't work even if the other side just "gave up." When we look at bots/afk, we are looking at the *wrong* set of problems. We should instead be looking at the downtime balance for combat for buffs and heals, the usefulness and gameplay for entertainers, and whether or notwe need more "minimal online playtime" roles like merchant or need to improve those roles in some way. To continue to run around in circles on AFK is counterproductive.
Message Edited by Padtai on 11-09-2004 10:20 AM
If entertainers could be a source of information rather than just buffs, then the interaction between players would increase I hope. During the course of an entertainer mission,stuff spouted off by a NPC that entertainer walks away with could be worth far more than the payment received. e.g. "Hey, I found a great deposit of X resource south of Theed... 98%!.... shuuuush... someone may hear". That would get the players back to the cantinas. The simple classic reason of finding out what's going on and what rumours are about.
Also... someone mentioned Holo vids and performances. Who hasn't found extra energy during a weekend of house cleaning by playing some music and maybe a few dance steps? Air gutaire when no one is warching? Entertainers can pre-record peformances (buffs) and sell them on the open market or on a vendor. Recording a holovid could be done in front of a live audiance for better results.
Hvzeda wrote:
You be surprised, it isn't much of a problem on Sunrunner. If buffbots exists in such great numbers, I must be blind. I've seen only 2 buffbots in the cantina (Coronent and Dantooine). And when I see a buffbot, I place myself near the buffbot and I can get more business than she does since I time her spam and hit my little funny comment macro about her.
Uh.... ok **frowns and raises eyebrows**
Sorry Kyrie, but I have to disagree - I think buffbots on Sunrunner are as big a problem as they are on other servers :/ I have seen several buffbots in several locations consistently, and they do detract largely from the live players there. We even have our own version of Bria's Briha by the name of --Buffbot--, andI've read several afk dancer biographies which openly advocate thatthey are training to become a buffbot. So sorry, I have to disagree - Sunrunner is in as much trouble as all the other servers
Anybody that reads this and thensays that I didn't answer your questions or responses yet, I'll get to them tomorrow. Hopefully this thread is going somewhere because after typing all those answers, I don't feel like it really adds anything to the discussion that isn't already known. Except for the solution to the problem that I offered. When I saw this on the musician boards the other day I thought it was a really good idea. I would advise going there to read the reasoning behind that idea as it is very well thought out.
Padtai wrote:
I keep trying to move the discussion forward but it spins backwards because I think some people just don't get it.I think they enjoy this as some alternative type of PVP or something, but I wish they would realize this isn't the place for that. Baicca, I think you're one of those people. If you aren't, then really, answer my questions.
So because other people are disagreeing with your point of view the discussion is moving backwards? How do you expect anybody to take you seriously in a discussion when you portray yourself so completely close minded on the issue.
1) Just how available should bonuses like buffs and skills like healing be?
The developers must have had some idea about how much downtime and how valuable they wanted the skills of entertainers (and doctors) to be. There's a reason they didn't put up npc's to heal or heck, put in wounds at all. That reason, my guess, is to give value to the skills while creating challenges for the combat players to overcome. Now maybe the developers underestimated how many people would play each role, and how hard the challenge would be. If that is true, then perhaps they need to evaluate whetherthey remove wounds/fatigue, and add blue frogs or npcs to provide some alternative healing, or let players have mechanics to provide some off-line healing that results from online play (the way crafted goods work). What they decide to do doesn't matter that much, but ultimately, we all need to acknowledge the concept that games need balances to them. I know the developers did not expect the amount of AFK that we currently have in the game. I know they don't "like " it, and I know that part of that must be because we are pushing the limits of the balance they designed into the game. The same way we all had fun fixing disabled bikes with a shuttle hop. Doesn't make sense to disable the darn thing if you pay nothing to get it fixed, does it? Doesn't give value to artisan skills to make new ones, if no one really needs new bikes? Sure its less convenient to have to buy new ones, but convenience for the combat player is not the only goal of the game. So the question of just how available buffs and healing has to be answered carefully. The more available you make them, the less they operate as strategy pre and post battle, and more just as affecting it during battle. That's not necessarily bad, but it does make the game a lot less complex.
Ok, I'm not sure if you have one question or multiple questions in these huge paragraphs but I'll just try to stick with answering the questions at the beginning of each (although they don't seem to really move the flow of this discussion "forward" as you put it).
I think that buffs and healing should be readily available to players 24/7. I think that the market is such that any demand will be met. I also think that groups and guilds are functional enough to provide these needs to their members. If my guild's armorsmith can make armor and then place it in a house so that it is available to me 24/7, why is it wrong if my guild's dancer or musician leaves themselves running an AFK macro so that I can get buffs from them 24/7? Players who are in guilds should have an advantage of obtaining products or services from other players. That isone ofthe reasons that people form guilds, to share resources.
It is extremely simple for me topick up novice medic and purchase woundpacks which I can use to heal all of myhealth, action, andrelated substatwounds. I believe that it should be equally as easy for me to get my battle fatigue and mind stats healed.
That leads to my next question:
2) Do you feel it is necessary to get value out of an unattened character? Do you feel it is necessary for that character to be *online* while you get the benefits from it? Could you be satisifed with something like merchant if it were part of the balance of the supply or buffs/heals and gaining expeirence? Or is most of the appeal of owning a bot ( or using or playing AFK ) tied up in the fact that its like fixing a disabled bike, that you know it is a way to get around the limits of the game?
This is not about how available we want buffs to be, but about why you have an alt in the first place. This question is also not about the role of entertainers, which I will ask in the third set. Let's imagine we turned every ticket collector into a buffer that could heal and buff 200% of your mind and body for 3 hours. You would no longer need your bot, would you? Would you threaten SOE not to make this change because you would cancel your account? Or would you just cheer the change and cancel? Does anyone out there really bot because they enjoy it, and if so, are there so many of those players that SOE needs to be careful in addressing the "shortage" solutions that they preserve a role for the "bot owners"? Or can we say these people are just cheaters who shouldn't be accomodated in a working game? How valuable is the need to AFK one's way to getting experience and rewards, compared to some solution built around offline play (such as holo vids recorded by live players, displayed through terminals or merchant vendors...lots of ideas, that's just a general sketch)?
This isn't really a well-structured question. I don't think that anybody would see it as "necessary" to gain value from an unattended character. Now if you link this to the previous question where I said that I should easily be able to get healing and buffs from entertainers and if you believed that at some time periods, the only entertainers available are AFK, then in that situation I would say that it is necessary for me to be able to get value from those unattended entertainers. I believe it is necessary that I am able to acquire healing and buffs if I need them to participate in the kind of content that I want to particiapte in.
I guess when it comes down to it, it really doesn't matter to me if that player is online or not, I'm just looking to acquirethe end result. I don't go to cantinas to socialize. I use a ventrilo server where I am always in conversation about various subjects. I am probably not an example of the average player in this respect. Because I use ventrilo, I have almost no need or desire for socialization ingame. I go to a lot of different ventrilo servers where various guilds have made their home. There are many players that encompass many professions that come into my guild's ventrilo server to chat about varoius game mechanics. I actually probably use the forums more for communication than I use ingame chat.
If entertainer buffs were sold on a vendor, I think they would probably be easier to acquire so I would probably prefer using a vendor to acquire the product. In my experience, entertainers have been very inconvenient and inefficient in providing this service to me and vendors have always been the opposite. Hence I would trust a vendor over a person, but then you have to remember that behind any vendor is a person who stocks it. So I'm not really trusting the vendor as much as I am trusting the crafter.
As far as owning a bot goes, it's not a way of getting around the limits of the game and I have never seen it as such. I think that you are confusing the owning of a bot and the owning of a second account. I wanted to have a second account so I could do more than what I could with just one account. Having my second account allows me to give myself and my friends dancer and musician buffs, as well as having a crafter that I can use to experience another part of the game that interests me. I guess you could say that people purchase a second ccount so that they can provide themselves a service instead of having to acquire it from somebody else. Well so be it, but there is nothing against owning a second account. It's a choice that any player can make.
That leads to my final questions:
3) The devleopers wanted to have a social game included in the package of SWG. How can we fix thse two classes to be fun to play, without creating shortages or inconveniences for other classes, to encourage the active player who wants to be social? What elements of this class appeal to those who play it?
As an entertainer, do you want to be useful to combat, or do you not care as long as you have something to make money from the system? Do you like being a healer? Do you want some more "active" quest type activities like the theater quests as a way to get experience (instead of just costing it)? Do you worry about retaining the freedom to dance/play music how you want rather than how the system wants? Do you not care about the dance/music, so long as you can chat?
Now notice, none of these questions relate to the idea of preserving the value for the unattened alt. I think if unattened alts must have value, then a social gamer's class is the *worst* possible choice. As people have noted,playing a role that a zombie can play pretty much ruins the social interaction part of the game. We can't have entertainer be *automated*, but we can find other ways to make buffs/heal available and ways (if we must) to give value to unattened alts, though I strongly would prefer minimal online time roles like merchant to get people to log off and free the servers up. We've been going around in circles because the current game puts all three questions inside the same class and obviously, what serves the needs of one set of players comes at the expense of another set.
Now some of you out there will read my questions and say why? Things work great now, but that's the point, they only work for you. Or say, why, if we could just get rid of the bots, things would work great for you. Again, only for you, someone else's game might become (in their minds) "unplayable." Well when that happens, we all lose, even if we think we win. We lose a game that has broader appeal than to just those who like to play the way we do. SOE actually did want dancers/musicians in the game as they spent money to motion capture moves, compose songs and they didn't have to do that if all they wanted was a bunch of afk bots. They also didn't want tons of down time either, because why have weapons if you are always sitting down healing?Face it: We loseWhen other people are having fun around you, that catches on. If everyone walks around complaining, that catches on too. Seriously, are you happy walking into a cantina to use a robot to buff you, or would you rather just be pre-buffed and skip the bot? I mean, that is an option you know if the dev's give it to us. Or are you happy buffing someone who's gone AFK the moment they stepped inside the cantina because they dont' want to talk to you, who grumbles about it and resents it? I'm not sure what a better option there is, but let's think of something. What we have now doesn't work and wouldn't work even if the other side just "gave up." When we look at bots/afk, we are looking at the *wrong* set of problems. We should instead be looking at the downtime balance for combat for buffs and heals, the usefulness and gameplay for entertainers, and whether or notwe need more "minimal online playtime" roles like merchant or need to improve those roles in some way. To continue to run around in circles on AFK is counterproductive.
I'm not exactly sure what should be done, but I can tell you about the best ideas I've seen so far through discussions in the musician and dancer boards.
Change the system so that buffs are received by anybody who /listens or /watchs an entertainer. They don't have to be in their group, they don't have to be /setperform on. There is a person on the musician forum who brought up this idea with the ID PoetDancer. They had a long explanation of the reasoning behind this idea that I am not going to get into, but basically it takes away the advantages of an AFK player to sell these services as a "bot" and breaks down the barriers that are perceived by combat players. Along with this change would need to be a couple other tweaks. First entertainer buffs need to be rewritable just like doctor buffs. Second all entertainers should be able to provide the buff in the same time period no matter how many flourishes they have in their macro. Lastly deny service lists need to be changed to operatelike ignore lists in that they carry over day after day until the player decides to take the person off their deny service list.
At this pointyou've broken down the payment for services purely to tips and you have opened the doors for any player to get buffs from any entertainer. As long as those entertainers have the same skill level, the buffs can be given at the same speed and with the same efficiency. All payment will be based on tips, and I believe that the entertainers who are more social and appealing to the crowd will get the most tips.
As far as your other questions go, I don't really care what else they do with the entertainer and related professions as I'm not interested in spending ingame time exploring that content. I have an entertainer bot out of necessity, but if I no longer needed it I'd probably level up smuggler as those are getting hard to find on my server and my demand for one is drastically increasing. I think it'd be great for those that do enjoy the entertainer profession if they did something like this. Based on what these players like in the game, I think it'd be great if they made entertainer quests that gave special clothes or furniture items or whatever kind of item that these kinds of players would like to have. The thing is I have my main toon, my jedi, and my Armorsmith/musician/dancer. My ingame interests are #1 PvP, #2, Armorsmithing, and #3 Loot hunting (only because it gives me things I can use for PvP). All of that takes enough time that I would never have any to explore content for entertainers.
Message Edited by Padtai on 11-09-2004 10:20 AM
Baciacca wrote:
Anybody that reads this and thensays that I didn't answer your questions or responses yet, I'll get to them tomorrow. Hopefully this thread is going somewhere because after typing all those answers, I don't feel like it really adds anything to the discussion that isn't already known. Except for the solution to the problem that I offered. When I saw this on the musician boards the other day I thought it was a really good idea. I would advise going there to read the reasoning behind that idea as it is very well thought out.
Padtai wrote:
I keep trying to move the discussion forward but it spins backwards because I think some people just don't get it.I think they enjoy this as some alternative type of PVP or something, but I wish they would realize this isn't the place for that. Baicca, I think you're one of those people. If you aren't, then really, answer my questions.
So because other people are disagreeing with your point of view the discussion is moving backwards? How do you expect anybody to take you seriously in a discussion when you portray yourself so completely close minded on the issue.
1) Just how available should bonuses like buffs and skills like healing be?
The developers must have had some idea about how much downtime and how valuable they wanted the skills of entertainers (and doctors) to be. There's a reason they didn't put up npc's to heal or heck, put in wounds at all. That reason, my guess, is to give value to the skills while creating challenges for the combat players to overcome. Now maybe the developers underestimated how many people would play each role, and how hard the challenge would be. If that is true, then perhaps they need to evaluate whetherthey remove wounds/fatigue, and add blue frogs or npcs to provide some alternative healing, or let players have mechanics to provide some off-line healing that results from online play (the way crafted goods work). What they decide to do doesn't matter that much, but ultimately, we all need to acknowledge the concept that games need balances to them. I know the developers did not expect the amount of AFK that we currently have in the game. I know they don't "like " it, and I know that part of that must be because we are pushing the limits of the balance they designed into the game. The same way we all had fun fixing disabled bikes with a shuttle hop. Doesn't make sense to disable the darn thing if you pay nothing to get it fixed, does it? Doesn't give value to artisan skills to make new ones, if no one really needs new bikes? Sure its less convenient to have to buy new ones, but convenience for the combat player is not the only goal of the game. So the question of just how available buffs and healing has to be answered carefully. The more available you make them, the less they operate as strategy pre and post battle, and more just as affecting it during battle. That's not necessarily bad, but it does make the game a lot less complex.
Ok, I'm not sure if you have one question or multiple questions in these huge paragraphs but I'll just try to stick with answering the questions at the beginning of each (although they don't seem to really move the flow of this discussion "forward" as you put it).
I think that buffs and healing should be readily available to players 24/7. I think that the market is such that any demand will be met. I also think that groups and guilds are functional enough to provide these needs to their members. If my guild's armorsmith can make armor and then place it in a house so that it is available to me 24/7, why is it wrong if my guild's dancer or musician leaves themselves running an AFK macro so that I can get buffs from them 24/7?
Your guilds armorsmiths is not AFK when they make the armor. Are they?
Players who are in guilds should have an advantage of obtaining products or services from other players. That isone ofthe reasons that people form guilds, to share resources.
It is extremely simple for me topick up novice medic and purchase woundpacks which I can use to heal all of myhealth, action, andrelated substatwounds. I believe that it should be equally as easy for me to get my battle fatigue and mind stats healed.
It isextremely simple to heal battle fatique and mind wounds too Baciacca, pick up novice entertainer. Half your guild can pick up novice medic, the other half novice entertainer.
That leads to my next question:
2) Do you feel it is necessary to get value out of an unattened character? Do you feel it is necessary for that character to be *online* while you get the benefits from it? Could you be satisifed with something like merchant if it were part of the balance of the supply or buffs/heals and gaining expeirence? Or is most of the appeal of owning a bot ( or using or playing AFK ) tied up in the fact that its like fixing a disabled bike, that you know it is a way to get around the limits of the game?
This is not about how available we want buffs to be, but about why you have an alt in the first place. This question is also not about the role of entertainers, which I will ask in the third set. Let's imagine we turned every ticket collector into a buffer that could heal and buff 200% of your mind and body for 3 hours. You would no longer need your bot, would you? Would you threaten SOE not to make this change because you would cancel your account? Or would you just cheer the change and cancel? Does anyone out there really bot because they enjoy it, and if so, are there so many of those players that SOE needs to be careful in addressing the "shortage" solutions that they preserve a role for the "bot owners"? Or can we say these people are just cheaters who shouldn't be accomodated in a working game? How valuable is the need to AFK one's way to getting experience and rewards, compared to some solution built around offline play (such as holo vids recorded by live players, displayed through terminals or merchant vendors...lots of ideas, that's just a general sketch)?
This isn't really a well-structured question. I don't think that anybody would see it as "necessary" to gain value from an unattended character. Now if you link this to the previous question where I said that I should easily be able to get healing and buffs from entertainers and if you believed that at some time periods, the only entertainers available are AFK, then in that situation I would say that it is necessary for me to be able to get value from those unattended entertainers. I believe it is necessary that I am able to acquire healing and buffs if I need them to participate in the kind of content that I want to particiapte in.
I guess when it comes down to it, it really doesn't matter to me if that player is online or not, I'm just looking to acquirethe end result. I don't go to cantinas to socialize. I use a ventrilo server where I am always in conversation about various subjects. I am probably not an example of the average player in this respect. Because I use ventrilo, I have almost no need or desire for socialization ingame. I go to a lot of different ventrilo servers where various guilds have made their home. There are many players that encompass many professions that come into my guild's ventrilo server to chat about varoius game mechanics. I actually probably use the forums more for communication than I use ingame chat.
If entertainer buffs were sold on a vendor, I think they would probably be easier to acquire so I would probably prefer using a vendor to acquire the product. In my experience, entertainers have been very inconvenient and inefficient in providing this service to me and vendors have always been the opposite. Hence I would trust a vendor over a person, but then you have to remember that behind any vendor is a person who stocks it. So I'm not really trusting the vendor as much as I am trusting the crafter.
As far as owning a bot goes, it's not a way of getting around the limits of the game and I have never seen it as such. I think that you are confusing the owning of a bot and the owning of a second account. I wanted to have a second account so I could do more than what I could with just one account. Having my second account allows me to give myself and my friends dancer and musician buffs, as well as having a crafter that I can use to experience another part of the game that interests me. I guess you could say that people purchase a second ccount so that they can provide themselves a service instead of having to acquire it from somebody else. Well so be it, but there is nothing against owning a second account. It's a choice that any player can make.
Unlike a Combat Medic, Medic or Doctors, Entertainers can only use their ability to their full capability in the cantina. We can't be out in a field and see that you have BF, pull out a droid, and heal that BF. While every other profession can be used to compliment another, Entertainer is at odds. You can either do one or another. but not both
That leads to my final questions:
3) The devleopers wanted to have a social game included in the package of SWG. How can we fix thse two classes to be fun to play, without creating shortages or inconveniences for other classes, to encourage the active player who wants to be social? What elements of this class appeal to those who play it?
As an entertainer, do you want to be useful to combat, or do you not care as long as you have something to make money from the system? Do you like being a healer? Do you want some more "active" quest type activities like the theater quests as a way to get experience (instead of just costing it)? Do you worry about retaining the freedom to dance/play music how you want rather than how the system wants? Do you not care about the dance/music, so long as you can chat?
Now notice, none of these questions relate to the idea of preserving the value for the unattened alt. I think if unattened alts must have value, then a social gamer's class is the *worst* possible choice. As people have noted,playing a role that a zombie can play pretty much ruins the social interaction part of the game. We can't have entertainer be *automated*, but we can find other ways to make buffs/heal available and ways (if we must) to give value to unattened alts, though I strongly would prefer minimal online time roles like merchant to get people to log off and free the servers up. We've been going around in circles because the current game puts all three questions inside the same class and obviously, what serves the needs of one set of players comes at the expense of another set.
Now some of you out there will read my questions and say why? Things work great now, but that's the point, they only work for you. Or say, why, if we could just get rid of the bots, things would work great for you. Again, only for you, someone else's game might become (in their minds) "unplayable." Well when that happens, we all lose, even if we think we win. We lose a game that has broader appeal than to just those who like to play the way we do. SOE actually did want dancers/musicians in the game as they spent money to motion capture moves, compose songs and they didn't have to do that if all they wanted was a bunch of afk bots. They also didn't want tons of down time either, because why have weapons if you are always sitting down healing?Face it: We loseWhen other people are having fun around you, that catches on. If everyone walks around complaining, that catches on too. Seriously, are you happy walking into a cantina to use a robot to buff you, or would you rather just be pre-buffed and skip the bot? I mean, that is an option you know if the dev's give it to us. Or are you happy buffing someone who's gone AFK the moment they stepped inside the cantina because they dont' want to talk to you, who grumbles about it and resents it? I'm not sure what a better option there is, but let's think of something. What we have now doesn't work and wouldn't work even if the other side just "gave up." When we look at bots/afk, we are looking at the *wrong* set of problems. We should instead be looking at the downtime balance for combat for buffs and heals, the usefulness and gameplay for entertainers, and whether or notwe need more "minimal online playtime" roles like merchant or need to improve those roles in some way. To continue to run around in circles on AFK is counterproductive.
I'm not exactly sure what should be done, but I can tell you about the best ideas I've seen so far through discussions in the musician and dancer boards.
Change the system so that buffs are received by anybody who /listens or /watchs an entertainer. They don't have to be in their group, they don't have to be /setperform on. There is a person on the musician forum who brought up this idea with the ID PoetDancer. They had a long explanation of the reasoning behind this idea that I am not going to get into, but basically it takes away the advantages of an AFK player to sell these services as a "bot" and breaks down the barriers that are perceived by combat players. Along with this change would need to be a couple other tweaks. First entertainer buffs need to be rewritable just like doctor buffs. Second all entertainers should be able to provide the buff in the same time period no matter how many flourishes they have in their macro. Lastly deny service lists need to be changed to operatelike ignore lists in that they carry over day after day until the player decides to take the person off their deny service list.
At this pointyou've broken down the payment for services purely to tips and you have opened the doors for any player to get buffs from any entertainer. As long as those entertainers have the same skill level, the buffs can be given at the same speed and with the same efficiency. All payment will be based on tips, and I believe that the entertainers who are more social and appealing to the crowd will get the most tips.
As far as your other questions go, I don't really care what else they do with the entertainer and related professions as I'm not interested in spending ingame time exploring that content. I have an entertainer bot out of necessity, but if I no longer needed it I'd probably level up smuggler as those are getting hard to find on my server and my demand for one is drastically increasing. I think it'd be great for those that do enjoy the entertainer profession if they did something like this. Based on what these players like in the game, I think it'd be great if they made entertainer quests that gave special clothes or furniture items or whatever kind of item that these kinds of players would like to have. The thing is I have my main toon, my jedi, and my Armorsmith/musician/dancer. My ingame interests are #1 PvP, #2, Armorsmithing, and #3 Loot hunting (only because it gives me things I can use for PvP). All of that takes enough time that I would never have any to explore content for entertainers.
Message Edited by Padtai on 11-09-2004 10:20 AM
Baciacca wrote:
Anybody that reads this and thensays that I didn't answer your questions or responses yet, I'll get to them tomorrow. Hopefully this thread is going somewhere because after typing all those answers, I don't feel like it really adds anything to the discussion that isn't already known. Except for the solution to the problem that I offered. When I saw this on the musician boards the other day I thought it was a really good idea. I would advise going there to read the reasoning behind that idea as it is very well thought out.
Padtai wrote:
I keep trying to move the discussion forward but it spins backwards because I think some people just don't get it.I think they enjoy this as some alternative type of PVP or something, but I wish they would realize this isn't the place for that. Baicca, I think you're one of those people. If you aren't, then really, answer my questions.
So because other people are disagreeing with your point of view the discussion is moving backwards? How do you expect anybody to take you seriously in a discussion when you portray yourself so completely close minded on the issue.
Did you read whatI wrote,before you typed that? I don't think so. If I were close minded, I wouldn't be asking what and how you want the game to be.
You should know, my POV is not as narrow as you thought, since I don't see myself as an entertainer ora fighter, or a healer or a crafter--I'm see me as all of those things. Andsince I care about all of that, IthinkI'm more likely to be open minded than someone only interested inimproving the experience of only one of those roles.
1) Just how available should bonuses like buffs and skills like healing be?
The developers must have had some idea about how much downtime and how valuable they wanted the skills of entertainers (and doctors) to be. There's a reason they didn't put up npc's to heal or heck, put in wounds at all. That reason, my guess, is to give value to the skills while creating challenges for the combat players to overcome. Now maybe the developers underestimated how many people would play each role, and how hard the challenge would be. If that is true, then perhaps they need to evaluate whetherthey remove wounds/fatigue, and add blue frogs or npcs to provide some alternative healing, or let players have mechanics to provide some off-line healing that results from online play (the way crafted goods work). What they decide to do doesn't matter that much, but ultimately, we all need to acknowledge the concept that games need balances to them. I know the developers did not expect the amount of AFK that we currently have in the game. I know they don't "like " it, and I know that part of that must be because we are pushing the limits of the balance they designed into the game. The same way we all had fun fixing disabled bikes with a shuttle hop. Doesn't make sense to disable the darn thing if you pay nothing to get it fixed, does it? Doesn't give value to artisan skills to make new ones, if no one really needs new bikes? Sure its less convenient to have to buy new ones, but convenience for the combat player is not the only goal of the game. So the question of just how available buffs and healing has to be answered carefully. The more available you make them, the less they operate as strategy pre and post battle, and more just as affecting it during battle. That's not necessarily bad, but it does make the game a lot less complex.
Ok, I'm not sure if you have one question or multiple questions in these huge paragraphs but I'll just try to stick with answering the questions at the beginning of each (although they don't seem to really move the flow of this discussion "forward" as you put it).
I think that buffs and healing should be readily available to players 24/7. I think that the market is such that any demand will be met. I also think that groups and guilds are functional enough to provide these needs to their members. If my guild's armorsmith can make armor and then place it in a house so that it is available to me 24/7, why is it wrong if my guild's dancer or musician leaves themselves running an AFK macro so that I can get buffs from them 24/7? Players who are in guilds should have an advantage of obtaining products or services from other players. That isone ofthe reasons that people form guilds, to share resources.
It is extremely simple for me topick up novice medic and purchase woundpacks which I can use to heal all of myhealth, action, andrelated substatwounds. I believe that it should be equally as easy for me to get my battle fatigue and mind stats healed.
When people start talking about what a working game would be, then the discussion has moved forward, especially when they stop insisting that it is working now counter to all those who say it isn't and the developers who say it isn't.
And in order to talk about a working game, we need to know what that means to people. So I asked because all too often people don't expect to have any cost or risk involved in obtaining buffs and heals, but that isn't balanced.
Now you don't seem to be saying you expect that, but like most combat people, I'm guessing you dont' want the costs or risks to be much.That's ok, that gives people something to work with at least.So maybe entertainers can stock vendors with holo vids, or maybe there can be healing centers where theres always a system provided heal, perhaps even buffs that aren't quite as good as live players. Or perhaps we just encourage people to pick up entertainer by increasing its combat usefulness by allowing self buffing and some defense mods. Some people think there are enough doctors, but others don't. I'm thinking most players might say its fair to expect to find healing or buffs within five minutes of logging on, waiting no more than say ten minutes to get it, and paying no more than say one or two missions worth of income to get it. We could push those limits out a little, I just pulled them out of air based on the usual complaints on the doc thread where people say waiting a 1/2 hour. checking three starports and paying 50k is too much, so I took 1/3 of it and said, maybe that's fair. Maybe I'm off by a lot about what most people would think was fair, but really, part of my experiment with my ent char was learning what its like to rely on starport docs for buffs....its not pretty.
I do have another question for you though. You seem to think its fair enough to be asked to pick up novice medic, but not to pick up novice entertainer. Is that because NM fits into your combat template, but NE doesn't? Or because even if you picked up NE tempoarily (drop scout or something), its jus tway too slow to be effective and worth the time for how often you would have to do it? If its the latter, one suggestion is increasing the healing power that one gets for healing your self at Novice entertainer. Or is that you simply feel you shouldn't have to spend skill points at all to get basic healing? Now if it is that, and there are those who feel that way though not sure you do, I think a solution has to involve something like goods usable by anyone made by the healing classes or some type of increased autohealing that's just always there (but kind of slow compared to spending skill points).
That leads to my next question:
2) Do you feel it is necessary to get value out of an unattened character? Do you feel it is necessary for that character to be *online* while you get the benefits from it? Could you be satisifed with something like merchant if it were part of the balance of the supply or buffs/heals and gaining expeirence? Or is most of the appeal of owning a bot ( or using or playing AFK ) tied up in the fact that its like fixing a disabled bike, that you know it is a way to get around the limits of the game?
This is not about how available we want buffs to be, but about why you have an alt in the first place. This question is also not about the role of entertainers, which I will ask in the third set. Let's imagine we turned every ticket collector into a buffer that could heal and buff 200% of your mind and body for 3 hours. You would no longer need your bot, would you? Would you threaten SOE not to make this change because you would cancel your account? Or would you just cheer the change and cancel? Does anyone out there really bot because they enjoy it, and if so, are there so many of those players that SOE needs to be careful in addressing the "shortage" solutions that they preserve a role for the "bot owners"? Or can we say these people are just cheaters who shouldn't be accomodated in a working game? How valuable is the need to AFK one's way to getting experience and rewards, compared to some solution built around offline play (such as holo vids recorded by live players, displayed through terminals or merchant vendors...lots of ideas, that's just a general sketch)?
This isn't really a well-structured question. I don't think that anybody would see it as "necessary" to gain value from an unattended character. Now if you link this to the previous question where I said that I should easily be able to get healing and buffs from entertainers and if you believed that at some time periods, the only entertainers available are AFK, then in that situation I would say that it is necessary for me to be able to get value from those unattended entertainers. I believe it is necessary that I am able to acquire healing and buffs if I need them to participate in the kind of content that I want to particiapte in.
I guess when it comes down to it, it really doesn't matter to me if that player is online or not, I'm just looking to acquirethe end result. I don't go to cantinas to socialize. I use a ventrilo server where I am always in conversation about various subjects. I am probably not an example of the average player in this respect. Because I use ventrilo, I have almost no need or desire for socialization ingame. I go to a lot of different ventrilo servers where various guilds have made their home. There are many players that encompass many professions that come into my guild's ventrilo server to chat about varoius game mechanics. I actually probably use the forums more for communication than I use ingame chat.
If entertainer buffs were sold on a vendor, I think they would probably be easier to acquire so I would probably prefer using a vendor to acquire the product. In my experience, entertainers have been very inconvenient and inefficient in providing this service to me and vendors have always been the opposite. Hence I would trust a vendor over a person, but then you have to remember that behind any vendor is a person who stocks it. So I'm not really trusting the vendor as much as I am trusting the crafter.
As far as owning a bot goes, it's not a way of getting around the limits of the game and I have never seen it as such. I think that you are confusing the owning of a bot and the owning of a second account. I wanted to have a second account so I could do more than what I could with just one account. Having my second account allows me to give myself and my friends dancer and musician buffs, as well as having a crafter that I can use to experience another part of the game that interests me. I guess you could say that people purchase a second ccount so that they can provide themselves a service instead of having to acquire it from somebody else. Well so be it, but there is nothing against owning a second account. It's a choice that any player can make.
You answer isn't well structured either, but that's ok. This isn't a school essay, just a discussion, one that is infinitely more productive than insulting people for having a certain point of view . Now, here we learn something about you that is interesting. Unlike some other bot owners, you dont' care much about owning the bot. You wouldn't (I think) do it if buffs and healing could be "readiliy available" through some other means (leaving aside we don't know what other means and what exactly you mean by readily available).
What you need to understand is that for other players, the very unattendness of the character is something they value. They call it a "playstyle". Again, its hard to separate people like you from people like thatbased only on afew "save the bot" type comments. Naish for example was a poster who had this attitude even though he claimed to support live entertainers too. Ultimately, he said if merchant could pick up the slack for live entertainers and he could make money off it doing that, then maybe he could do it. Though of course, he's not going to stop until there's some changes. But at first he seemed to be arguing that entertainer had to be kept in a state where he could profit off owning a bot. Now its hard to "compromise" with someone like that who fails to see that AFK play isn't play, but its easier to compromise with someone about how available buffs should be and which classes (or the system) should have the power to deliver them.
That leads to my final questions:
3) The devleopers wanted to have a social game included in the package of SWG. How can we fix thse two classes to be fun to play, without creating shortages or inconveniences for other classes, to encourage the active player who wants to be social? What elements of this class appeal to those who play it?
As an entertainer, do you want to be useful to combat, or do you not care as long as you have something to make money from the system? Do you like being a healer? Do you want some more "active" quest type activities like the theater quests as a way to get experience (instead of just costing it)? Do you worry about retaining the freedom to dance/play music how you want rather than how the system wants? Do you not care about the dance/music, so long as you can chat?
Now notice, none of these questions relate to the idea of preserving the value for the unattened alt. I think if unattened alts must have value, then a social gamer's class is the *worst* possible choice. As people have noted,playing a role that a zombie can play pretty much ruins the social interaction part of the game. We can't have entertainer be *automated*, but we can find other ways to make buffs/heal available and ways (if we must) to give value to unattened alts, though I strongly would prefer minimal online time roles like merchant to get people to log off and free the servers up. We've been going around in circles because the current game puts all three questions inside the same class and obviously, what serves the needs of one set of players comes at the expense of another set.
Now some of you out there will read my questions and say why? Things work great now, but that's the point, they only work for you. Or say, why, if we could just get rid of the bots, things would work great for you. Again, only for you, someone else's game might become (in their minds) "unplayable." Well when that happens, we all lose, even if we think we win. We lose a game that has broader appeal than to just those who like to play the way we do. SOE actually did want dancers/musicians in the game as they spent money to motion capture moves, compose songs and they didn't have to do that if all they wanted was a bunch of afk bots. They also didn't want tons of down time either, because why have weapons if you are always sitting down healing?Face it: We loseWhen other people are having fun around you, that catches on. If everyone walks around complaining, that catches on too. Seriously, are you happy walking into a cantina to use a robot to buff you, or would you rather just be pre-buffed and skip the bot? I mean, that is an option you know if the dev's give it to us. Or are you happy buffing someone who's gone AFK the moment they stepped inside the cantina because they dont' want to talk to you, who grumbles about it and resents it? I'm not sure what a better option there is, but let's think of something. What we have now doesn't work and wouldn't work even if the other side just "gave up." When we look at bots/afk, we are looking at the *wrong* set of problems. We should instead be looking at the downtime balance for combat for buffs and heals, the usefulness and gameplay for entertainers, and whether or notwe need more "minimal online playtime" roles like merchant or need to improve those roles in some way. To continue to run around in circles on AFK is counterproductive.
I'm not exactly sure what should be done, but I can tell you about the best ideas I've seen so far through discussions in the musician and dancer boards.
Change the system so that buffs are received by anybody who /listens or /watchs an entertainer. They don't have to be in their group, they don't have to be /setperform on. There is a person on the musician forum who brought up this idea with the ID PoetDancer. They had a long explanation of the reasoning behind this idea that I am not going to get into, but basically it takes away the advantages of an AFK player to sell these services as a "bot" and breaks down the barriers that are perceived by combat players. Along with this change would need to be a couple other tweaks. First entertainer buffs need to be rewritable just like doctor buffs. Second all entertainers should be able to provide the buff in the same time period no matter how many flourishes they have in their macro. Lastly deny service lists need to be changed to operatelike ignore lists in that they carry over day after day until the player decides to take the person off their deny service list.
At this pointyou've broken down the payment for services purely to tips and you have opened the doors for any player to get buffs from any entertainer. As long as those entertainers have the same skill level, the buffs can be given at the same speed and with the same efficiency. All payment will be based on tips, and I believe that the entertainers who are more social and appealing to the crowd will get the most tips.
As far as your other questions go, I don't really care what else they do with the entertainer and related professions as I'm not interested in spending ingame time exploring that content. I have an entertainer bot out of necessity, but if I no longer needed it I'd probably level up smuggler as those are getting hard to find on my server and my demand for one is drastically increasing. I think it'd be great for those that do enjoy the entertainer profession if they did something like this. Based on what these players like in the game, I think it'd be great if they made entertainer quests that gave special clothes or furniture items or whatever kind of item that these kinds of players would like to have. The thing is I have my main toon, my jedi, and my Armorsmith/musician/dancer. My ingame interests are #1 PvP, #2, Armorsmithing, and #3 Loot hunting (only because it gives me things I can use for PvP). All of that takes enough time that I would never have any to explore content for entertainers.
This is sort of my point, that you don't care about their gameplay, but face it, the developers do and they do. So if you don't have the answers, that's fine, as I said, I didn't really write this *for you*. But part of a discussion to solve the problems in the game has to include some discussion of what would make entertaining fun, not just what would keep the supply of buffs and heals available for you. After all, if we only adressed changes in the game about what makes the combat game better, that would be narrow-minded thinking wouldn't it?
Message Edited by Padtai on 11-09-2004 10:20 AM
Actually, it added quite a bit, if only in that you clarified that your view is that the only reason to preserve afk bots is you can't figure out any other way to make buffs/heals readily available, but that you weren't opposed to making entertainer work better if it didn't intefere with your supply of those things. So what I'm hearing you say now is that your botis just a means to an end, one you could do without if your need for buffs were met, but not until then. When you look at it that way, what you want no longer has to necessarily come at the expense of what entertainers want. There are some who feel differently, you know.That's why you see all these flame type posts and hostility.
I really want the game to be fun no matter what role you play. I want to hear what people think about the various suggestions I've thrown out or that others have. What do you like about them, what do you not?How do we get the game to be fun, where the only war is rebel and imp, not afk and atk or combat and entertainer?
By the way, I did read poetdancer's suggestion and have commented on it before. I don't think that idea of hers is very good, though her other one about entertainers generating missions has some promise. The reason I don't think it would be very good is that it :
- Doesn't decrease the incentive to spam talk (bots will say when cycles start/stop, grinders will stilll say watch me so I can grind, tip me etc.)
- Doesn't decrease the incentive to lag the server with unnecessary commands (no one is around, bot still runs buffing macros)
- Doesn't increase the incentive to play an entertainer while attending the character
- Doesn't increase the incentive for players to talk to an attended entertainer over an unattended one
- Doesn't increase the reliability of buffs and heals (exceptmarginallly that no one has to beg to get in groups with entertainers or bots any more).
- Doesn't balance the costs of bots' healing and buffs compared to other services/goods in the game
The only improvement is marginal in that no one has to beg to get in groups with entertainers or bots, so on the edges, it might make getting a buff from a bot or live player who's in a social group, easier. And it may discourage some bots from operating in public places, since they loose control over who is getting buffs off them--but then agan, so do live players who now have to actively /deny anyone (assuming they can even see who's watching them to do it). So much for being a rebel entertainer who doesn't want to buff imps or vs versa. That decision is removed from your hands. So much for saying you can tell that jerk who insulted you to go somewhere else, because that is too (you wont' know he's watching right?). Not to mention, so much for encouraging players to buy brandy and spice, because now they can just go grab buffs off any entertainer without having to even ask. I don't think its going to lead to people rewarding the more "amusing", but I think it will push out those who only do it to make money. The grinders, those who think they're helping everyone out by leaving the bot up, well, they'll still be operating. And I think even those in it for money will still keep on, because most right now don't ignore those who don't pay--its too much work. And many people still pay simply feeling bad to get something for nothing.
You can read my post somewhere far above that talks about what I think might work as a solution and what also I see as the real problems in the game.Basically, I think the key is to make sure anything functional that occurs in entertainer cannot be done passively (levelling and creating useful things/services). Then to separately bolster the healing/buffing system if necessary with having the system provide alternatives when live players cannot be around, because really, live players can't be around 23/7, doctors definitely aren't. This is long enough,so I won't explain those ideas again, but I really want to hear what others think works or doesn't work in various ideas and why, and especially, what problems are they trying to solve? If all they focus on is interaction forgetting about availability, that's no good for combat players. If they only focus on the passivity but forget about the social nature of the class, that's no good either.
I respectfully disagree. And I disagree because we have never actually examined how the current buff system promotes buffbot style play. And it promotes buffbot style play because it rewards only the effort to give out a "/" command. It rewards paying homage to an unwieldy and uncertain process, and forces distributors of this process to routinize it, mass produce it, and provide it in a manner that promotes automation. It rewards the buffbot who makes no attempt to amuse or bring life to the avatar. It rewards the live entertainer who constantly plays Star Wars 1, flourish 1, but can do so in +25% buffing clothes. It does not cater to the unique, lively, and immersive fun live entertainers provide. It only caters to those who can most quickly automate and master a cumbersome process--live play, boring live play, or automated play notwithstanding.
There are significant numbers of entertainers who want the ability to buff taken away. Why don't I hear calls to take BF healing away? Because BF healing is an intuitive process that is simple and goes onin the background of what we do. We cannot help but give off BF healing when we dance in a venue, and because of that fact, we are freed up to worry about other things. This allows both the patrons and the performer to do other things, since they don't really have to worry about the process of getting these things, like reward those in the cantina who are providing an amusing atmosphere.
But with the buff, there is stress and uncertainty. Its because its a lot more complex of a procedure to give. And what happens when one is dealt with complexity? They become anxious, and gravitate to the source that can cut through the complexity. That is why we have buffbots. They create an automated self-serve system whereby patrons can take charge of their own healing or buff, rather than deal with another party on the other end which creates uncertainty. And I envy this about buffbots. Its why we dislike what they do. Because they are able to attract patrons to them simply because they have mastered a process that our very "liveness" cannot guarantee.
The mere fact that we are live drives patrons away from us in the current buffing system. And I do not believe that its because they hate us. Its just they can't trust a live player to deliver the precision that a good buff requires. Like all complex, routinizedcoordinations and functions, when technology becomes available to replicate the effects in a predictable way, it is favored over the unpredictable and subjective abilities of the individual.
So its no wonder why this class is overrun with automation. The buff system promotes automation. And not only does it promote automation, but it promotes automated spam. Because such spam is unavoidable when the buff requires aprecise, sequential coordination between entities neither can control. In order to make sure that the audience is doing their part to get the buff, the buffbot or the live player has to give instructions as to what to do. Instructions that are not very fun to type out, listen to,and obeyover, and over, and over, again for the live player. But the buffbot has no problem spamming instructions and destroying the amusing atmosphere in the cantina. Because the need to distribute the mechanics of the cantina have trumped the need to maintain a fun atmosphere in the cantina. The sad truth of it is, buffs have become too serious of a matter for entertainers to be lighthearted about it.
And since buffs are so taxing to administer, many entertainers have outright abandoned buffing altogether. Because the things we do to be an effective buffer take us out of the things we enjoy. Like playing in groups, changing costumes, or making jokes. The uncompromising nature of the buff function demands complete satisfaction of the process in order for it to take at all--or heavens forbid be less than satisfactory. Because even if we do everything right on our end of the process, if the buff does not come out in a satisfactory way at the end of the process, we get blamed for it by default. And we either don't get tipped, or we earn a bad reputation for things that we have no control over. That's another reson why buffbots are so popular as buffers. There is nobody to blame if the buff goes wrong.
Buffing today also gives the impression to those around us that we are tipped for giving out "/" commands. But you know what the problem with that is? You don't need to be amusing to give out a "/" command. You don't even have to do more than Basic 1, flo 1 120 times for about four minutes. Because even if we somehow eliminate unattended distribution of buffs, we'll still have a problem with this class. Because how would you like it if you were constantly looked over in favor of a boorish live player who does nothing other than play Star Wars 1, dance basic 1, and flourishes only flourish one, but just happens to have +25% clothes? What if this person came here and gloated on the forums saying "look at me and how rich I am? Look at what a good entertainer I am?" Well let me tell you. That's exactly what's going to happen if buffbots are mitigated, but we do nothing to make the buff system passive. It does not require creative play to give it. And its because it requires no effort to give that we are faced with the situation we are faced with:characters who make no effort whatsoever to even play at the keys give out the limited commodity everyone seems to want, and being adored for it. The current buffing system promotes the players with the superfluous accounts, the players who can provide the greatest loot, and the players who provide the most boring and predictable atmosphere. Because nobody needs to be amusing to issue a "/" command, and in fact amusement only makes the patron feel as if the entertainer doesn't care about buffing. Like I said, buffing has become too serious a matter to be taken lightly.
You say you want buffbots eliminated.
You say you want to facilitate the live game.
You say you want the aura and atmosphere of the cantinas to be like it was in the old days.
Then why are you all constantly defending this buffing authorization that facilitates buffbots?
Make buffing operate like the mechanic nobody has a problem with: BF healing. Make buffs utterly passive, requiring only /watch or /listen. Do right by our patrons. Do right by the concept of the game. Do right by the cantina function. Do right by ourselves. And when we do it, the only ones we will be hurting are the buffbots.
Because nobody ever lauded buffbot owners with praise for their BF healing prowress. Nobody laudes the buffbot owner with praise for wound healing. And I bloody well know nobody laudes the buffbot owner for the amusement value. The only reason buffbots are lauded with praise and tips is because they treat this /invite and /setperform like the garbage they are, and give it to anyone no questions asked. Because it is garbage, these buffing authorizations. They create a level of complexity that shouldn't be there and does not promote the good things we as live players do in the cantina.
Place buffs back where they need to be: in the hands of the patrons. Givethe live entertainer thefreedom to simply skill animate, and not have to authorize a limited and exclusive command that turns our gameplay on its heads. Give the liveentertainer the freedom to buff the 21st person. Give the entertainer the freedom to not have to worry about buffing cycles, or when a patron should start or stop watching. Give the entertainer the freedom to take charge of their own hard earned abilities by not strightjacketing them through some sort of overly complex "tap dance" between two characters. Give the audience the freedom to not have to worry about getting a buff. Give the audience the freedom tonot have to worry about how much a "/" command is worth.Give the audience the freedom to enjoy and reward the good things that are happening in the cantina, because they don't have to worry anymore about getting the things he or she goes to the cantina to get. Have faith in our patrons to reward the good work that we do, and love our patrons enough to give them their mind enhancements without having to suffer through an unwieldy process just so we can keep it from them if we so choose.
Now I have to take issue with Padtai's concerns:
Padtai wrote:
- Doesn't decrease the incentive to spam talk (bots will say when cycles start/stop, grinders will stilll say watch me so I can grind, tip me etc.) There will be no need for spam from unattended characters anymore, because there will be no need to coach a player through a cumbersome procedure. No need to spam availability of buffs, because the mere act of dancing will buff. In fact, buffbots who spam will lose if we get rid of the active protocols of /setperform and /invite, because players will be so put off by the spatial clutter, they'll resent it. The only reason that patrons don't mind the spatial clutter now is because they need the spatial clutter to find out who can give them an /invite, as well as to discover when to /start and /stopwatching. The great thing about getting rid of the active protocols is that there will be no more buffing cycle. And there will be no more buffing cycle because we will no more be responsible for "starting the buffing process." When we dance, we will buff.
- Doesn't decrease the incentive to lag the server with unnecessary commands (no one is around, bot still runs buffing macros) Macros for buffbots are complex beasts that tell the character to /invite, spam "buffing here" , spam /flourish constantly to shorten the timein orderto buff someone else, spam instructions, and disband. Most of these instructions are there because the process is so complex. If we simplify the process, it will simplify the macro. Because the process will simply be to skill animate.
- Doesn't increase the incentive to play an entertainer while attending the character. It creates every incentive to attend one's character. Since mechanics will be free for the taking, it would behoove the master character toengage the audience. Because if he or she doesn't, there will be the possibility he or she won't get tipped. It also gives the novice an incentive to play at the keys. Because if the master dancer doesn't engage the audience, the novice can get the benefit of having characters come for the master level mechanics, but be able to engage the audience and maybe get a tip for doing the amusing the master was unable to do. In fact, I would argue that this current system you protect gives players no incentive to play. In fact, it gives players an incentive to promote boring, routinized play that at least is predictable. Because you don't need tobe amusing or engagingto give out a "/" command. In fact, you don't even have to do more than press F1 to start a macro.
- Doesn't increase the incentive for players to talk to an attended entertainer over an unattended one. What else are they going to do while they are there? The same things they did at launch time: talk, engage, and enjoy the ambiance that is there. The only reason they aren't doing this now is because the process demands so much of the riveted attention of both parties that patrons are not free to enjoy the ambiance we create. Because if they do, they may miss an important chat bubble, or GroupChat indicator from the buffbot saying its time to stop /watching, or time to start /listening, or a /tell from another player asking for an /invite into the buffbot's group. They are engaged now. Its just that they are engaged about tedium and process, and not about things designed to distract them from the process of gaining mechanics.
- Doesn't increase the reliability of buffs and heals (exceptmarginallly that no one has to beg to get in groups with entertainers or bots any more). It creates superior reliability. Because the problem with buffs is that two parties must somehow coordinate their actions to pay homage to a process that is so strict, any deviation from it will waste time. Things must be done in sequence, and done according to a particular, efficient mathematical function in order for it to work. Mathematical efficiency and complex coordinations can best be accomplished by a computer. But if we get rid of the authorizations from our end, then players will be free to take charge of their own buff, and not have to somehow coordinate who should /startwatching whom, or what they can't be /listening to before they are /watching, etc. It takes all the tedium out of the system, and makes it more natural and intuitive like BF healing.
- Doesn't balance the costs of bots' healing and buffs compared to other services/goods in the game They are getting free buffs now. Perpetual buffs. Buffs that are unlimited and available all the time now. Which leads me to believe that if entertainer buffs were a real game breaking overriding concern that was destroying the economic viability of professions, the developers would have come down on the ability to give away buffs 24/7 for free from unattended characters. Well we all know its destroying the economic viability of some professions, and they are ours. But its only because we are not able to play to our strengths in an environment that does not allow us to showcase our strengths, and also because the successful distribution of our functionality requires that we engage in practices that leave no room to showcase our strengths.
It seems like a radical proposal, but for me, it just makes common sense. Passive mechanics are something I understand and can build upon, and its something you all understand and can build upon. Now I have been ATK with you through all of this. I hate the unattended routinization of the game. I have been an advocate of all the things that promote live play at the expense of unattended buffbotting. And if I wasn't completely 100% sure that making buffs wholly passive would nothurt the live player's game, I would never suggest it. This is such a simple change. It doesn't require a fight. It makes us more effective. It places the emphasis back on amusing the audience and away from mere buff distribution as the purpose of this class. And if I'm wrong? Then we can change something else. But I don't think I'm wrong. At the very worst, it will be no worse than the situation we have now. But it can make things a whole lot better for everybody, live players most of all.
Message Edited by PoetDancer on 11-11-2004 01:58 AM
Message Edited by Dreamland on 11-10-2004 04:39 PM
Dreamland wrote:They are on large servers because of sheer numbers.
This is a very important fact that is often over looked in these arguments....
In a perfect game economy entertainers would be paid for every buff or heal. If players were paid out correctly for every heal and buff provided you'd see more players picking up the skills. If doctor buffs worked like entertainer buffs would there be players actively playing doctors?
Imagine if doctors couldn't self buff or heal damage, didn't need any resources for buffs other being in a med clinic and people grouping with then to use a /command on the doctor. How many players would WANT to play that profession?
Dreamland wrote:
Here is the part you are missing. Everyone knows your position, because every buffbot that has come across this board has argued the same thing. That they want what they want and they want it now. You have no interest in this profession whatsoever. You are milking it for its benefits. However, (and heres the part none of you seem to get). Is that you are making it very difficult for the people that this profession was designed for. You come in here expecting someone to be sympathetic to your desire not to socialise while simultaneously trampeling all over their gameplay and telling them they should be happy with a compromise.
Heres the way it is for me. There can be no compromise. I wan't the profession that i started playing this game with back. I should not have to compromise with you. I do not want to compromise with you. I want to see your abhorent and self serving abuse of my game mechanics torn out of the game like the cancer that it is. If it was any other profession than entertainer we would not even be discussing this because it would already be fixed. I will never yeild to the idea that you should be able to run an automaton to dispense my game mechanics for free, in any form, or in any capacity.
OK, you might as well leave the discussion at this point. You're asking for a solution that is 100% in favor or the ATK entertainer's position which is not an option. You can't say how the profession was intended to be played because honestly you don't know. Only the original developers of the profession know. You cannot argue that some forms of AFK play were not anticipated and intended because there are too many game systems that have been in place since launch that allow it. I remember back in n00b days when AFK sampling for resources overnight or all day long was ESSENTIAL for a player to advance. When harvestors weren't available or were too expensive to purchase, there was no other means for crafters to acquire the resources they needed to level their profession. AFK play was intended, and to say that all of it should be thrown out of the game is a very ignorant request. As the game has changed, AFK playstyles have changed.
You argue that I am milking a professions skills for my own benefits. What the hell do you think anybody playing any profession is doing? Professions provide benefits to players, that's why it's worth leveling them. You do the hard work of leveling so you can do the cool stuff as a master. Why do you think players level smuggler? To slice weapons, sell faction, craft drugs, etc. Why do you think players level any crafting profession? To make cool items and sell them to other players. People play professions to get the benefits that those professions provide. Now you may say that I am not benefiting my dancer/musician character, but only my main toon. Well that is my right because I own the frickin account. I believe that your complaint is really with players having second accounts, and that is a whole other issue separate from the one here. My entertainer is also my armorsmith and I use it to make armor for myself. I also use it to make credits for my main so I don't have to run missions for credits. Are you saying that this is equally wrong? I give armor and credits that I make with my armorsmith away to friends. Is this wrong too, because I am benefiting them with my other account? You need to seriously look at your stance and realize what you having issue with.
I'm asking for a compromise because a compromise is the only option available. The ATK entertainer population is a small minority compared to the combat player population that wants buffs. Is it not obvious to you that a compromise has to be made? If it was feasible for SOE to remove AFK play by taking away recursive macros like you want, why haven't they done it already? The obvious answer is that they realized that is not the solution to the problem, and that taking away recursive macros would have too many negative effects on too large a portion of the player base's gameplay styles.