Dancer Archive
Thread: There's nothing wrong with dancers asking for tips!
What a great story. And I love your nickname for "Miss Grouchypants." :-)
I am glad you took the high road... I have had similar experiences and I am quite sure the tip-nags (as I call them) are shooting themselves squarely in the middle of the foot. Almost everyone I have seen gripe about tips gets very little, and those of us who don't gripe, seem to make more than enough to keep ourselves in business.
C
I have a friendly reminder macro, actually it is more of a thank you for watching us macro,that I used to use once every few hours, I haven't used it n a while now. I have seen several beg for tips every 2-5 minutes and when that happens, noone gets tips. Usually it is someone AFK and has it in their long annoying macro that lasts for hours at a time. One guy had it in his every 2 minutes and went on and on and on all night long while he was afk.
I went one night for a 3 hour span of dancing and chatting with every person that came in the door and walked away with over 15k credits. Last Saturday I danced for 24 hours straight and sat behind the computer and talked to just about everyone that came in. I made enough to pay for the 9k skill I was working towards and the 10k master skill and still had well over 90k left and not once in that 24 hours did I ask for a tip.
Some people tip $10 and some have tipped my up to $5000 at a time. It just depends on if they have the money and how much you really interact with them. If you are afk then you may not get any tips, expecially if you are using a begging macro while afk. Some people will give gifts if they have something on them and no cash. Others will appologize for not being able to tip and thank us for the entertainment. To that I reply, no big deal. The next time they come in, they give big tips.
I also hunt and do missions on occation, but I have always made enough dancing to pay for anything I needed to get, even the over $100k in clothes I have bought and the countless skills I bought cause stingy people refused to train them because they were the *close to master* skills. I train any skill I have free of charge and on occation people will tip me for the training. I even trained a friend in her last skill before master and in Master dancer. She payed half the cost of master to me. In the past week before that I had trained her in over $100k worth of skills for free.
Here are my macros, and I have had many compliments on them......
Welcome all
Come in, sit down, relax and enjoy the show.
On behalf of all entertainers, I would like to thank everyone who watches, heals, and tips their entertainers.
See, that is not begging for tips, it is thanking anyone who I may have missed thanking before.
Another good way to make sure you get tips is to thank those who do tip you, that makes them happy that you noticed them and they usually tip better next time they see you. If others see you thank someone, they are more likely totip you too. And always thank people who heal you too.
One night I was visiting a cantina on Naboo and a guy stayed there and healed everyone for over an hour and I was the only one to thank him, several times. As I left to go back home to Tyrena, I thanked him for healing everyone and tipped HIM $1000. A medic has to make their money somehow too.
"And I am getting abit curious to some of the statements I seen.. Like.. "It's an entertainers duty to entertain".... "
I think that's because half of the people contributing to this discussion are most likelyPvPers who are pretending to be entertainers because theydesperatelywant to keep realentertainers from having any control over the service they provide.
"Considering most don't even thank me for tips anymore, I kind of do have a problem with it... I used to play a musician, Stu (Theed-Bria), so I know how sucky living on tips can be. Doesn't give anyone a reason not to show any common courtesy, however. "
Well that works both ways. Customers VERY rarely say thanks for the mind heal - in fact I can only remember that being said once, maybe twice, in my dancing career of over two weeks. Many of the dancers I know are just getting fed up with catering to customers who give us evenless interaction than they offer NPCs.
Another problem is that, after the recent mission payment changes, dancers tend to be getting together in places like Theed and Coronet, and in a crowded cantina it's easy to miss the message that you've received a tip. I have altered my messages to show tip messages in red so that I can thank the tipper, but I still miss them on occasion.
Beery wrote:Customers VERY rarely say thanks for the mind heal - in fact I can only remember that being said once, maybe twice, in my dancing career of over two weeks. Many of the dancers I know are just getting fed up with catering to customers who give us even less interaction than they offer NPCs.
Wow... Beery our experiences are just 100% different. People I have healed generally fall into one of 4 broad categories, those being:
1. People who tip for being healed.
2. People who thank for being healed.
3. People who stim-pack in exchange for healing.
4. People who do not tip, thank, or stim pack, but just get healed and do nothing.
In my estimation, type #1-3 types outnumber the #4 types by at least 2:1. Now, there are lots of entertainers who scoff at #2 and say things like "You can't put thanks in the bank." I know some who can stimpack themselves and say, "I don't want or need your stim, TIP ME." So I guess to them these things are not "thank yous" but they are to me.
In particular the people in the #2 category are often socializers and roleplayers. Since I am in this game first and foremoest to roleplay, if the RP is good that is thanks enough. Of course, it is true that the good roleplayers tend also to be good tippers, and many, many people fall into combinations. I had someone last night thank, tip, and stim-pack me. I sent her a /tell, "You really don't have to tip if you do heals, you know." She replied, "I know, but usually I tip way bigger than that if I'm not doing healing."
Also, remember that tips and stim-packs are a form of thanks. If someone tips you, that's a "thank you" in money. It might be a little nicer if they said it verbally also, but they don't really have to, and not everyone is up for roleplaying or socializing anyway.
You are right that experience spam can drive tip messages right off the screen... which is why I have them colored red, heals colored blue, and bank notes colored green. I also have system messages in their own separate chat window. So when I see something red on the screen, usually it goes by too fast to read it, but I can switch to 'system messages' and find the name of the tipper/healer, and /nod or /smile or whatever in appreciation (depending on what it was and how much of it there was, etc).
I can only make one suggestion, given the vast difference in our general experience. Try the Naritus server, planet Theed. In my experience, there at least, more people thank, tip, or heal, than not.
C
- The cantina is one giant chat room. It just looks a lot prettier.
- From what I've learned, asking/begging for tips is highly looked down upon, except for when I needed the creds to get novice dancer training, people were more prone, so if you've got a legit reason...then maybe.
- If tips aren't coming in, go to a marksman trainer, and pick up a cdef gun from the bazaar. Or you could start a road as an artisan, etc.
- Take advantage of the adolescent (spelling?) group of people that play. I'm a female twi'lek who goes for the whole slutty black fleshwrap/lekku wrap look and boy do I get a lot of comments. The little sexually frustrated boys will be like "girl pretty, me give money to girl, ugh."
It is, of course, to each their own. However...
I average 5-10K or so for two hours of dancing during peak hours. I have never, ever asked for a tip.
As many posts have already indicated, interacting and actually entertaining will increase the likelyhood of you getting tipped...people do like to talk about themselves. CHs LOVE to show off their latest pets, for instance. Be present and in the moment, for crying out loud.
Want to increase your tips above and beyond what some good roleplaying can do for you? Always, always thank anyone who tips you. Even if they only tip you 10cr. Why? It makes people feel generous (and encourages them to be so in the future) and simply saying, "Why thank you, PlayerX" it is a very subtle reminder to everyone else who is watching. No one feels harassed.
If you read posts on other boards, lots and lots of people get very angry about being pestered for tips. Many of them have a policy of never tipping anyone who asks. Is that fair? No, gentle reminders shouldn't be considered criminal, but it is the reality of how lots of people are choosing to behave. Many of those same people indicate that they tip (or increase the tip) for entertainers who manage to interact in some way.
All that having been said, most people can't make a comfortable living on tips alone. Just like real life. Trust me, I am an artist and a theatre person and almost everyone I work with also has a 'real job' to make ends meet. If tips aren't doing it for you, find other sources of income, don't expect other players to make up the difference for you.
Ibis Master Dancer, Tattooine, Kettemoor
You assume that I don't follow these rules. I know how to get tips - it's not a question of that, and I don't ask for tips either anymore - I don't need them. But there's nothing wrong in asking.
Not everyone gets tips at the rate you do. Maybe some servers have more generous people than others. For every person like you who gets lots of tips, there's 10 people who get nothing. These people follow your guidelines too. How do you explain that?
Nobody ever said there was anything morally or ethically "wrong" with asking for tips.
Many of us just think that it is tacky, and on top of that a lot of the players who would otherwise tip don't like it (whether or not they should or shouldn't like it, or whether their behavior has caused it, is really a matter for antoher topic). Knowing that many of the people who you want to be generous get annoyed by this (in general, though surely not all of them), and that you are relying on their generosity, and that annoyed people tend not to be generous, prudence dictates that asking for tips is probably not the best way to get them.
So far on this and other threads it seems that, except for you, the rest of us have experienced that NOT asking for tips seems to work better than asking for them.
So is it "wrong"? No.
Is it probably not prudent? Yes.
C
"So far on this and other threads it seems that, except for you, the rest of us have experienced that NOT asking for tips seems to work better than asking for them.
So is it "wrong"? No.
Is it probably not prudent? Yes."
I fear some here may believe asking for tips is unethical, so they want tobelieve it's also imprudent. Firstly, if a player doesn't ask for tips, how wouldhe/she know? The facts of these things tend to be vague, beingprone to all kinds of subjective assessments and personal prejudices. Secondly, even assuming that certainplayersdoget more tips by not asking, the same may not be true for me. I've done both - during certain periods of my career I've asked, and in certain other periods I've not asked. It is certainly prudent for me to ask, since my tips go through the roof if I do so. Anyway, nowadays I don'teven bother to dance unless I need healing. I can make much better money doing other things - it's simply not worththe effortanymore, tips or no tips.