Dancer Archive
Thread: New List, take a look please
Great list Raven, I'm glad to see healing exp up there, its running my bank dry buying stims and my sanity has all but left meto dance in cantinas full of other entertainers but no customers!
As for the AFK Dancing, I can see the problem, however I can't really say I'm against it in the currect state of this profession. Yes, I am one of those players who took up dancing because my holocron told me to. However, dancer has always been one of those professions I always wanted to become, and I started out with high hopes never intending to be AFK for any part of it.
... and then I actually started Dancing. Needless to say after the second hour I was bored out of my mind watching my toon dance around and bugged all I could out of everyone on my friendlist for conversation lol. There just is nothing to do while watching the repetitiveness of the dancing moves. Yes, they're great in the first hour after you get them, but the novelty runs out far too quick to remain entertained for all the other hours you must spend dancing away.
I liked the idea someone previously posted, perhaps making it like Dance Dance Revolution where you must do a certain combination on beat to some arrows for an exp bonus if done successfully.THAT would be great! It would be what this class really needs, something to engage in.
Combat classes havethe AI of their mobs in PVE, and its that interaction with the AI that is fun. (No one would play for long if it they had to shoot or swing at a burlap sack that just sat there!) And really, entertainers have no interaction of that sort. We are just shooting at a burlap sack: we start attacking (/startdance), do a special move or two (/flourish #), and thats it, we get exp, but the sack doesn't provide any challenges for us and becomes agonizingly repetitive. I know no one would play long if there was no AI in combat, why shouldn't Dancers and Musicians too have some AI that provides us with interaction and actual challenges?
Just my two cents. Keep up the good work Raven!
Velvet-dancer wrote:
"
2. One single AFK Master Dancer is all the entertainment an entire town needs in a cantina. Everyone watches this person because they are the fastest healing to be found. You know you are getting master-level healing with this person, afk or not.
Same holds true for ATK dancers. A single ATK Master Dancer is all the entertainment is all an entire town needs in a cantina. Everyone can watch this one person because s/he is the fastest healing to be found. No real difference between ATK and AFK here, so what's the problem exactly?"
The difference is that you can group with the dancer who is at the keys and share in the healing exp. It won't matter if everyone chooses to watch the master dancer since you will still get some healing exp. However, you can't group with a person who is not at the keys (Unless their macro actually includes a /join line, but many don't seem to) so you lose out on all the healing exp unless the people watching decide to be generous and watch you instead.
You can ask the Master to group. The master may or may not choose to do so. Still little difference between AFK and ATK there.
Regarding the sea of bodies, at least you can *ask* a dancer who is at the keys to move over a bit to make some space. There's a chance they'll accomodate you. There is ZERO chance that an AFKdancer will accomodate your request to make some space--and yes, I've tried emailing them and politely asking them to AFK off to the side to free the dance floor area for the people at keys. Most of them said No.
And why exactly does someone's CPU have the same rights to that space asa living player?
Why are you breaking it down to rights of CPU vs. Human? Why aren't you counting it the same way SOE does - $15 a month is $15 a month.
(and sorry about the formatting of the colored text, and the resulting confusion it's likely to cause :/ )
... and then I actually started Dancing. Needless to say after the second hour I was bored out of my mind watching my toon dance around and bugged all I could out of everyone on my friendlist for conversation lol. There just is nothing to do while watching the repetitiveness of the dancing moves.
Well, instead of bugging your friends, there are 19 other people in your group this is the social profession, so talk to them, they must be as bored as you are... oh wait... they are AFK. Have you ever made a line of dancers syncronized dancing anything ? Even basic is fun. Just ask around who wants to have fun... oh wait... they are AFK. You see, this profession has no outside missions to fulfill. You have to create fun yourself by using the means of the game. At the moment most people just come in, park their Macrotainer somewhere in a totally unorganized mess and go AFK. No wonder the social profession is boring to you, there's no one there to socialize !
Take 5 real Entertainers of any level to an empty cantina and you will easily have two hours of good fun. After that even this gets repetitive, but doing missions for two hours isn't so much better then. The point is that linking AFK to the boredom is wrong. There was fun before AFK. There will be fun after AFK. The cause/effect is that AFKers are boring to socialize with, not that socializing is so boring that people go AFK.
( If it were boring at the keys, why level, it won't change. )
I think the "stop-dancing on collision with objects/bodies" is a terrible idea. Other people have already stated enough reasons why, I just want to add my support to them. Terrible idea.
I don't know why the healing XP thing has become a big deal all of a sudden - I had surrendered my dancing skills (in fact, was all the way back down to novice entertainer) and am now slowly working my way back up. As before, the healing boxes fill in the quickest. Can anyone tell me why this is now an issue?
So, for a personal top 5 list:
1. Falling
2. Battle fatigue healing outside the cantina for Master Dancers
3. The technique lightshows to actually do something (I favor distract/dizzy/messed up targeting sort of feature in combat, with the ability to use the lights when not actually dancing, but that's just me)
4. A more user-friendly mind-buffing system.
5. Fix for existing dances, including expansion of flourishes for those currently lacking.
And one more, just for fun, because I just thought of it:
6. The ability to inflict battle fatigue on others (why not, we heal it) when involved in combat with them
NotYourAvgEwok wrote:
I don't know why the healing XP thing has become a big deal all of a sudden - I had surrendered my dancing skills (in fact, was all the way back down to novice entertainer) and am now slowly working my way back up. As before, the healing boxes fill in the quickest. Can anyone tell me why this is now an issue?
Well the deal is, some of us where able to get lucky and find kick ass spots to get healing exp and it went up almost as fast or as fast as Dancing exp. For most people tho it was a big struggle and it lagged behind a lot. Well, that was sort of just tough luck for them, it wasn't bad enough that I felt it was anything we needed to push as an issue and nobody else seemed to either. Then comes the problem....
Enter the new death system... Most of our healing exp is gotten from people that aren't paying to clone and people that die because it didn't hurt them except for a few wounds. With the new system, those people are all but gone. People almost always make sure to clone and insure wherever they go now and people try a lot harder not to die at all. So basically, from what I'm reading and seeing, the amount of incoming healing exp has dropped well below half of what it use to be.. hence the problem. This isn't a problem thats just going to go away I'm trying to get things adjusted so they balance out closer to the exp gain we had before.
Thats it in a nutshell.
So I initially dropped into this forum to see how the other side feels, so to speak. After reading a bunch of posts (especially Sultrina's school thread) I decided that dancing sounded like a lot of fun, and grabbed novice entertainer on my other-server alt. I have to say, it really is fun, and I hope to be able to spend more time doing it, but even with what little time I have been able to spend I've got some thoughts.
First, let me thank Ravenmist--great list, it certainly gives us newbies something to keep an eye on. As far as my take on it, I don't have a full list--like I said, I haven't been able to spend the time to get that much insight, but from general experience, and what I do have dancing, here's my take:
Falling. This is somewhat like critical failures in crafting professions--I still fail in experimenting when making stims, the tailors I know still fail when crafting, so why shouldn't dancers fall? Yes, it's annoying. But it's just the way things work. (I look at falling as an opportunity for further RP...blame it on a barfight and spilled ale. Blame it on a late night. Whatever, use it to get a conversation going.)
Mind buffing self. No opinion on this one. Too many good arguments both ways.
Changes to mind buff aplication. God yes, as both a client and hopefully one day a provider, this would be great. I particularly like the suggestion someone made about butterflies fluttering about the patron as they gain the buff and swarming when it's complete.
Fix lyrical/formal. Haven't gotten far enough to know they were broke, but fixing broken things sure sounds like a good idea. 
Entertainer missions. I tried to do a few of these, but the instructions are so vague that I had no idea what I was doing--someone wanna give me a hint? I'd much rather dance than try to run delivery missions across 4K of hills, even if the pay is a lot lower.
AFK entertainers. Not sure what can be done code-wise to help this. CSR-enforcement is about the only thing I can think of, and I can't really see this happening. Unless we can garner the aid of the playerbase in general (which again, I don't see happening) I don't think this problem will ever really be solved.
New flourishes. I'm all for this one--as Sultrina said, maybe 6 flourishes, two transitionals--I really like the idea of being able to chain dances more seamlessly.
Group commands. No opinion on this one--so far I've been dancing in out of the way places to try to get a feel for timing and what the flourishes do...so needless to say I haven't yet been grouped.
Buff bugs. Please god, fix them! (It'd be nice to see when my HAM is going down while buffed...as it is I don't notice any damage until I'm about a hit away from incapping...very annoying.)
Registration issues. Without having a better method for denoting registration I'm not sure this is worthwhile. Maybe a different color icon on the overhead map/radar...I'm not really sure.
System messages. Even before I picked up entertainer this was something I thought was lacking. I was appalled when my Master Dancer friend told me she had no way of determining who was watching her.
Techniques. No opinion, don't have any yet. Tho I'm all for making things useful rather than just eye-candy.
Exploit. Fix it! Exploits are bad, mmmkay?
Mirror. Sounds great--I'm sure I'd have loads of fun with it, once I get a better feel for which flourishes do what and how long it takes to do 'em.
Bleed. Fix it. Doesn't affect me yet, but I'd hate to think I'd have some naughty bit or other showing--that's not the type of dancer I intend to be.
Misspellings. Fix 'em. They look unprofessional, even if they don't affect anything.
DoS. Sounds good to me.
FPs. Yes! Give healers FPs for healing. One of my biggest complaints about PvP, as a healer I get nothing out of it except decay, wounds, and loss of faction. I'd love to see more "support" folks getting FP for doing their part to help their faction.
Collision. Gotta throw in with the static-yes, player-no crew here. Too much chance of intentional griefing.
XP. Makes sense to me--I shouldn't be penalized if I happen to like a lower-level dance more than a higher-level. (Also, if group stuff is implemented, that would force everyone to dance at the highest-dance of the lowest-level character, right? Another reason to make XP based on level, not dance)
Field abilities. As I said in another thread, I'd love to see field-related abilities for entertainers.
Drift. Even after as little as I've danced this is annoying. I'm not sure what a good solution would be (maybe mark where you were in the base dance when the flourish began and pick up from that point? This assumes, of course, that flourishes return you to their starting point--not entirely sure about this.)
Comments aside, I think my top five would rank:
1) Changes to application of mind buff to denote progress/completion.
2) System messages on player watch/stopwatch. /listWatch command.
3) Healing XP needed to level. Increase XP per heal, reduce amount required to level. Whatever.
4) Lyrical/rhythmic. Hopefully by the time I get them they'll be fixed
5) Falling down. It should happen, even at master, but maybe not as often.
So there ya go. My thoughts as a new novice entertainer--yay! 
Syzygy -- Master Combat Medic / Novice Creature Handler (Gorath)
Eicia-- Novice Entertainer / Novice Scout / Novice Marksman(Kettenmoor)
NotYourAvgEwok wrote:
6. The ability to inflict battle fatigue on others (why not, we heal it) when involved in combat with them
Both Dancers and Musicians have that already... SW1 and Rhythmic1 
good call.
Mihnea wrote:
I think the list is great. The only concern I have is the collisions stopping dancing. I had someone the other night placing pets on top of me just to harass me...if he could have made me stop dancing as well I think it would have been even worse than it already was. I don't want to have to stop dancing just because some idiot could care less and runs through the floor. Now, I would absolutely love not running through furniture though. Rather than stopping I think a better solution would be like what happens with walls, where you just kind of slide along.
That's pretty much my wish list exactly when I'm dancing, good job Ravenmist! 
Collision detection on all static geometry should be one hundred percent do-able and I hope we get that one soon, dancing into tables is no fun. It's been said like five times in this thread already I think, but stop freaking out about the collision detection for non-statics. No game other than the Sims Online has ever done this as far as I know, and I doubt the dev team for this game is willing to spend the resources on it. It would for sure be cool to really be able to hug, pet, slap, or whatever and not be able to fight while standing _in_ a mob, but it's not going to happen. 
Little tiny anims could happen tho, and that would be a really neat addition to the Master Dancer box. They'd all have to have the same start and stop position to work right unless they wanted to give us some way to auto tween (might be too server intensive) or make them in sets so tiny flo 1a, 1b, and 1c all end position with starter position 2a, 2b, and 2c and so on. Something like that would be really fun and add a lot of diversity to the canned anims we see over and over again.
And falling stinks, period. How often do you go to a ballet, night club, or even a strip club for that matter and see dancers fall? Not often at all. If I ever fell as much dancing irl as I do in this game, I would have stopped dancing. 
Nice list Ravenmist. You do a nice jobfor this class, and it seems as if you work hard to do what you/we feel isright. I am so glad this is your job and not mine.
alot of people posted what they though, i wanted to share my thoughts.
5.) Falling down -I am a master dancer and i DO dance with dancing knowlage cloths on and i still fall. I can't stand it.
1.) Mind buffing self -I have other skills besides dancing that would benifet from a buff. I can't stand searching for and paying someone else to buff me. i am buffing everyone in my group befor battle, excpt myself, BOGUS!
healing exp -I have capped this way b4 i capped my dancing exp. so IMO what ever works for the people that need this changed.
9.) fixing the dances -ok, yes please. they are broken, they need fixed.
6.) fix missions -ok, yes please. they are broken, they need fixed.
AFK dancing -NOT how I dance. i pleed the 5th. I can not be bothered to jump on this ban wagon. but it would be nice to not have as many threeds about all of it.
8.) 8 good flourishes per dance -yes please.
15.) group commands -yes, please. Sounds fun.
10.) fix buf not resetting -its broke, please fix.
12.) fix small catina reg. -its broke, please fix.
11.) Abitlity to reg. -yes, please. that would be most helpful.
3.) System message -OH YES!!!! would be great.
Technique abilities -what ever you ask to be added to this, please make sure it will also benifet the master dancer as well as the dancer that is skilling up.
music/daning exp -it's broke, please fix.
13.) mirrior -sounds like that would be fun.
body part bleed -it's broke, please fix.
Captivator -i cant spell either 
14.) Denial -yes please, would help.
4.) Faction points -OH YES!! this would be great!
NO.) Collision detection -oh please don't do this. I want to be the only one to stop me from dancing.
Make the XP earned based -i do not need exp. so i have no comment.
2.) field abilities -OH YES!! this would be great!
7.) Reduce the drifting -yep stop making me look stupid.
so thats my take on it. the #'s are my wish list. Again Hats off to you for doing such a great job!!
Now is it me, or do we always seem to bash one another... about our ideas, thoughts and otherwise? Why in the world can't we just mesh all of them together and get what we need? I mean, to look at other's posts and to critize them isn't whats going to help our profession, to look over everyone elses posts and keep them in mind to mention to the DEVs is Ravenmist's job, NOT EVERYONE ELSES. So please, take this in mind, that's a reason I've stopped posted here as much. I love being a dancer, I just can't take the fact that a lot of us bash each other. I do have an idea I would like brought up to the DEVs if Ravenmist may do that for me.
The collision problem, I know it wouldn't be such a"roleplay" idea, but, it may help.
You know how when you are dancing Lyrical or formal, and you hit the wall but you keep dancing? Instead of dancing through people, why not make it where we dance beside them, like as if they were a wall. Instead of start dancing, stop dancing, start dancing, stop dancing, in a very crowded cantina, like Coronet... It's just an idea.... Thank you for taking it into consideration.
I am waiting for the flamers to flame away....
Master Dancer/Novice Merchant/Novice Politican/Working for Novice Pistoleer
**Falling down.
As someone else mentioned, this is a critical failure, but it shouldn't happen as often (if at all) at Master.
**Mind-buffing self.
Not helpful for non-combat dancers. But I'm the only dancer in my small guild, and I'm working on Pistoleer as well so I do hunt, and when I go on hunts I can buff everyone's mind but my own. It sucks. Yes, I can get someone else to buff me, but that takes another 5 minutes beyond the 10 it's taking for the group buff to everyone else...and if they can find another dancer to buff them, theoretically they don't need me. I want to be able to buff my own mind, even if I can only do it while passively buffing.
**Reduce amount of healing exp needed to skill up. (with new changes to death system its way to hard to get the required amount of healing exp to gain our skills.)
This one I don't know about; I made master the day the patch came out fixing death. I would have gotten all my dancing XP at the same time I got all my healing XP if I hadn't botched surrendering skills earlier on. I have another dancer character who had this at novice as well but I haven't played her much since she got it; let's see how much healing XP she has when she's gotten all the dancing XP she needs for master.
**Make changes to mind buffing system to make things easier. Some way to tell when mind buff is fully applied. Perhaps a message to let you know when another dancer has already used /setperform on someone you try to buff. Make it only require /setperform and a new command /setperformdone instead of /watch and /stopwatch, so that we can make sure that it's given properly. Take guesswork out.
This would be wonderful. The butterflies are a nice touch.
I have my chat set to timestamp incoming messages so I just count 5 minutes from "You set your performance to %TT", but I still have to say "You should be finished now, let me know."**Fix the lyrical/formal base dance.
Gahh...I didn't know it was broken! Will have to do some experimenting and see.
**Fix Entertainer Missions.
Yes. As it is I don't bother with them; I tried once and I was so confused on what exactly I had to do, I didn't try again. I took up Pistoleer to pay the bills--I know how to shoot at things; that's pretty self-explanatory.
**AFK Entertainers.
Yeah, this is a problem. Before I read much on this board I was vehemently against AFK-macrotainers...but I see now that we have bigger problems. I like the idea of having a CSR /tell someone they suspect is AFK-leveling, but it's easy to write in a /reply command. (On second thought...that would mean they're /replying to whoever they last talked to, which would either get the macrotainer /ignored or an email from that friend saying "take that out of your macro". It might work anyway.) I hate macrotainers as much as the rest of us, but I don't see a way around it. My solution: If you MUST go AFK, please take yourself to a back room or at least away from the main dance floor. I don't have a way to "enforce" this but to me, it's only polite.
**New flourishes, full 8 for every dance. (good ones only please)
Yes. I was not pleased when I got Exotics and found that the last four flourishes were just shake-it-baby filler.
**Group commands for dancers that allow /groupstartdance, /groupchangedance, /groupstopdance and perhaps even /groupdistract 1 etc... also Synchdance?
Please!! I hate having a choreographed show look crappy because somebody misses the transition from one dance to another. Even if we all hit the change, it isn't a smooth transition.
**Fix buff not resetting on death along with all the other buff bugs.
I guess I haven't been reading enough; I'm not sure what this is.
**Fix all the small cantinas which don't let people register (Dathomir, Dantooine, etc. ** AND **The ability to register at outposts, HQ, adventure planets ,non traditional cantinas. Maybe some visual aid to see someone is inside the cantina without having to look at the map? (could have a light/lamp on front door that turns on or off)
I lump these two together. This fix for registering could easily be exploited by somebody adding a /registerWithLocation to their macro. Whether this is an AFK problem or a registering problem, I don't know. I'd like to be able to register at a house since we use a large house for the Lekku and Lace Cantina (in place before player cities and there aren't any cities nearby, though we are considering moving...), but that could probably be exploited and/or too much work. Just a thought.
**System message - A notice of who is /watching you and perhaps a /listwatch command.
Please. I'd prefer a /listwatch command over more system spam when somebody starts watching me, but both would be nice.
**Technique abilities (effects) are just eye candy but should add something (perhaps XP bonus)/ reduced action cost
I'd love to be able to use these in combat. Several combat-profession friends of mine were surprised when I told them that /distract didn't actually distract anything or anybody. And if we still can't heal BF in camps (though I like allowing Master Dancers to heal BF in a Ranger camp), this would make a good reason to bring us along on a hunt.
**Fix the "playing music getting dance xp" exploit!
Hrm...something else I wasn't aware of.
**A "mirror" ability that allows a dancer to chose the mirror opposite of a flourish. (mirror should be a toggle)
Oooh...that would look nice. Not a priority, though.
**Fix the body part bleed through on our clothes.
I haven't experienced this problem myself, but I've seen it on others. Ridiculous.
**Captivator is still misspelled as Captivater
Please fix this!! It's a simple change. There are other title misspellings too; I can't remember them off the top of my head (and none are within the Dancer profession so theoretically they wouldn't matter here...hehe).
**Denial of Service Enhancements. /denyService faction:[Rebel|Imperial] and /denyService guild:guildName
I would love this!! As it is, my only interaction with the GCW is taking factional destroy missions and badges, neither of which involve dancing.
Maybe we could also get a TEF for healing overts, or maybe covert dancers can't heal opposite-faction overt players? It seems like griefers could have too much fun with the TEF but I can't figure out exactly how. I can see that an overt bounty hunter could send a lot of TEFd dancers to the cloning facility, though, especially since we have to stop dancing and equip a weapon to defend ourselves--assuming we have any combat ability to start with.
**Faction points for Dancing while overt and healing other overts? (small amount of faction, definitely make it slower then running missions by a lot but still something.)
That works too. Maybe 1 FP per 5 minutes of dancing...enough to make it worthwhile but not enough to abuse.
**Collision detection. Some items you can walk through, others you can't. Make more of them so you can't go through them so dancers don't end up standing in the middle of tables. Also possibly make it so colliding with another player makes them stop dancing?
We've already discussed to death player-player collision. Player-object collision needs to be there...I was surprised it wasn't already, especially since you can't run off the edge of a stage.
**Make the XP earned based only on the level of the dancers experience, not on the dance itself. If a high level dancer uses basic they should get the same XP as if they used exotic.
That doesn't make sense to me, unless basic somehow looked better when done by a master dancer. It does suck for the grind--basically it emphasizes leveling over looking good, since I could repeat the same flourish for all the thousands of XP and level as fast as if I were varying them. But if you're dancing to level, you probably don't care about looking good anyway.
**A few reasonable (non bard like) field abilities? Ability to distract mobs? Npcs? (short stun, confusion, draw attention/aggro?) (hey, it makes sense I think) Perhaps a resistance to B.F.?
Hmm...a short stun or confuse attack would be nice...I think we need more than the +7 to melee/ranged defense we get at master, at least. I don't know if I like the idea of drawing agro...that would assume that whatever agro I'm drawing wouldn't kill me by the time the rest of the group can kill it. My Twi'lek dancer is hardly a tank for that kind of thing, even in armor. Distracting would be nice...maybe a /distract attack would force the enemy to a "saving throw" and if they lose, they lose an attack round or three. Easiest for NPCs/sentient mobs but it could work for animals too. I want this.
**Reduce the drifting effect certain flourishes cause.
Doesn't seem like a big problem to me. Sultrina and others have mentioned how to fix this without stopping the dance...what can we ask the devs to do about it?
Okay, so here's my top 5 list (do I have to pick only 5??):
1) Synched dancing commands like /groupchangedance
2) /listwatch command
3) A full 8 unique flourishes
4) Reduce falling
5) At least one field-related buff (master dancers heal BF in ranger camps, technical effect-related attacks, etc.) OR Mind-buff self, since I have to pick 5.