Dancer Archive
Thread: Take Our Buffing!
Schardour wrote:
Drygo wrote:And, I am more than willing to give up buffing. But, only AFTER we have been given something lucrative in return.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating the surrender of skills without fair or favorable conpensation. I want to see our forums be able to shift focus to other possibilities though, and not marry ourselves completely to buffing as a central form of income or gameplay. Our revamp is coming soon, probably sooner than we think, so let's continue to throw new ideas out there.
Getting rid of buffing just takes us back to where we should have been anyway
It is important to remember we never ASKED for buffing. All we wanted was a way to get paid and get nifty items for doing what we all already enjoyed doing... Playing as dancers.Even after buffing was introduced we still never came close to being able to make the credits and items we wanted strictly from dancing. Dig through the first couple of months postings to this forum... You won't find a clamoring for the ability to give mind enhancements. What you will find is people asking for better dances, better props, better cantinas and better payouts on our missions. That's it. Buffing has all but chased those people out of the game.
Give us back the dancer we had in beta and the first two months of the game. Even though we didn't make a lot of money at least the cantina was a pleasant place to be
Schardour wrote:
I disagree. I don't think people praise buffbots because they can enhance the mind. They praise them because they're forced to find an entertainer to prepare, andbuffbots make that search incredibly simple for them. They give a self-service line or a drive-thru window to aretailer with a long queue. Admit it, you're not going to have the Bestine cantina manned 24 hours a day. You're not going to have the city cantina manned 24 hours a day. If buffbots are gone, yes, they'll be forced to respect us, at least when they're speaking directly to us. Doctors don't have as much of a problem with bots as we do. Don't you still get a little annoyed when you can't find a doc on your server that's willing to buff? When a player can't snap their fingers and have an entertainer at their service, they're going to be angry. That anger is going to be directed at the entertainer profession. I would love to be able to hold on to our buffing skills, but in reality, the focus of the game has shifted quickly from interdependence and time-sinks to fast-paced action and highly-interactive play. That's the reality. We can't change that, but we can adapt to it.
They are not forced to find an entertainer to prepare. They choose to onlyplay with mind buffs. That's the point I think is being over looked. As it stands now, this choice costs them absolutely nothing but forces me to always be their slave if I wish to compete. They can go to their favorite drive through again and again with no effort and no cost. Now remove that ability. Make their choice cost them effort. I chose to be an entertainer. That meant I had to find wounded combatants to heal in order to progress. Why is their time more valuable than mine? It isn't, but for some strange reason we have been forced to treat it as such. Do I get irked when I can't find a doctor for buffs? Yes. But I don't blame the doctors nor do I log out in a huff. Instead I make an effort to befriend more doctors so that the likelihood that they'll be available when Iwant them is increased. When I do find one, I am grateful that they took the time to provide their service for me. Let their anger be directed at me, it already is any way so I have lost nothing. I'll demostrate a few choice / commands for them and be on my way and they'll be forced to find one of the other 10 or so live entertainers on Shadowfire and hope I haven't contacted them to say "Joe Dork needs an attitude adjustment." The problem is that the game focus hasn't shifted to interactive play. It has shifted to "me and my army of alts so that I do not have to interact" play. I'm sick to death of it and I will no longer be a slave. Now I just need the game developers to help break the slave chain that's around my neck. Come on Devs. You can do it. I know you're scared. So am I. But I really really need you to do this one small thing. Then I'll freely join with Til and we can talk about all the other possible roles we can create for the entertainer professions. The options are limitless. But my patience is not.
cheers,
Ikewe
Ikewe wrote:
Why is their time more valuable than mine?
Schardour wrote:
But on the same token, why would ours be more valuable than theirs? Again, I can understand seeking interdependence and a need for our profession, but does it have to be buffing? Does it have to be a pre-combat support role? For those of you that claim buffing is fun for you, is it really the buffing? I would think that it's the interaction that's associated with being in the presence of a friendly individual. Buffing, byitself, is not fun. We struggle to make it fun by entertaining our clients while they wait to rush off to combat.
I believe our customers should not have PvPers among them. In my humble opinion, our focus should be post-combat, PvE, crafters, and other aspects of the game that draw from our temporal costs, as our monetary costs are relatively low. Currently we expect players to come to us out of need, then pay for their time, which they resent having to give us in the first place. I would much rather be desired.
It has to be more valuable because it is now all about me me me. No i'm kidding. I'm not saying it has to be MORE valuable. But it should be just as valuable. Right now it is less and that's what is killing me.It is less because the game made it less by allowing it to be available 23/7. It's not less because combat players have to come to us. It's less because it is guaranteed for them. Think back to the early days of the game. When players went into a cantina to get healed, just healed not even for buffs. What happened if there was no entertainer? They had to keep searching or they had to spend the skill points to pick up novice entertainer and spend time healing their own minds. So when they went into a cantina and found a live entertainer they didn't say "I've spent 30 minutes looking for you. Where the heck have you been???" They breathed a sigh ofreliefand were thankful. I don't think it would take that much of a cultural revolution to have that environment again.
And no, in the long run it doesn't *have* to be buffing. But right now it is. I do not have the patience to wait for them to give me something else because that is going to take too long. They need to fix what we have NOW. Once they make that small step I'm willing to make giant leaps toward some other role. But I cannot simply continue with the current situation until that magic day arrives nor can I muster much creativity or hope about what great and wonderous worlds await us if we have some other function. I need this current function to be fixed before I will be able to have any trust or faith in the "unknown" function that will come with a revamp.
Personally I like buffing. I like it whether they talk and joke with me or sit their like a lump. I like it because I know I have helped them. It's my definition of the support role. I helped someone accomplish their goal. All I want is for them to realize that I had to make that choice and that I could have easily said "No" and they would have to do more than simply turn to the drive through next to me to get one.
cheers,
Ikewe