Dancer Archive
Thread: Why is Dancing regarded so poorly by those in other professions?
Cudayen - i think you miss his point. The point being that if you wanted to you could turn on yoru character, set it in a cantina, walk away with a macro running, check back an hour later, re hit the macro and walk away. You can't do that with combat. There is no macro that will a) run your character aimlessly around, b) find a mob that cons your level c) use tactics to draw the mob out and d) kill it... and e) loot/harvest it for you.
There also isn't a significant risk involved... unless you are an overt dancer/musician.
But I respect musicians/dancer. I've never met anyone disregard or treat a musician/dancer with little respect. On one server I play a pistoleer/smuggler/creature handler- on another I play a dancer (working towards master.) I really enjoy the people who play entertainers. They are a different ilk. They aren't in the mindset to get their fix of killing mob X. It's also a refreshing change of pace from combat/crafting.
On the other hand, which class can I play at work? The entertainer of course. I can turn on my extra machine, login, start dancing, turn off my monitor and check up on it every 10 min. Can't do that witha fighter type.
I been playing online games and roleplaying for about 4 years and I am tired of shooting stuff. If SWG and the dancer profession hadn't come along I would probably had quit playing all together... Hmm not sure if that was good or not 
Just becourse we don't fight don't mean we don't know how to or can't do it. It just means that we don't want to right then and there. My char is almost Master dancer now, and I have done it without any AFK time at all. And I have had fun all the time. Loving it One thing I do miss is more of a roleplay community on Eclipse where I play, i am not sure if I just missed it completely or if it's just not there.
I just can't seem to understand where this risk thing you keep talking about even comes into the picture. We will all play the char and the profession we want to play and play it how it was meant to be played. And there is no risk to shooting silly mobs, only risk you can encounter is that you don't know how to talk and actaround people. Not even in a game, that is the big risk.. And that's what we as dancers see when you come in to the cantina and /lick /hug poweremote us so much only thing I can do as a roleplayer is to ignore you...
And to be honset, I didn't know that the dancer profession was regarded so poorly by others, maybe becourse I couldn't care less what they think.. We are all here to have fun
Ah well.. Now I am done blabbering. Thank you
"There also isn't a significant risk involved... unless you are an overt dancer/musician."
Opou, have you simply ignored the previous 4 or 5 posts? How could you possibly regurgitate that assertion, restating this ridiculous idea that other professions have more 'risk' than dancers, when the posts prior to yours all make convincing arguments that no profession endures any risk in this game?
Honestly, I am becoming convinced that the PvP style players don't have a brain cell between them.
Get a clue - you're supposed to respond to arguments with counter-arguments. Posting the same baseless assertion over and over again with no supporting argument is mere propaganda. If you think we're stupid enough to fall for mindlessrepetition - and if you think mindlessrepetition is a good substitute for persuasive argument, I'm afraid you've grosslyunderestimated us. By responding as you have, you show your inability toboththinkcriticallyand argue persuasively.
Opou wrote:
Cudayen - i think you miss his point. The point being that if you wanted to you could turn on yoru character, set it in a cantina, walk away with a macro running, check back an hour later, re hit the macro and walk away. You can't do that with combat. There is no macro that will a) run your character aimlessly around, b) find a mob that cons your level c) use tactics to draw the mob out and d) kill it... and e) loot/harvest it for you.
I can think of several places in several cities that just continually spawn aggressive monsters. Just stand there... turn off PC... come back to train. Ie.. outside Coronet, just write a macro that spams bodyshot every 3 seconds, and another that does a "/loot all" every 10 seconds.
In general I do not exactly think that solo combat is rocket science.I would not be quite so dismissive of pvp, however, but not becauseit is somehow more "risky." I have not done pvp in SWG, only in Dark Age of Camelot. So in part I am extrapolating from that experience.But it seemed to me that there are really only two types of pvp and I am skeptical that this game has produced another. One pvp type is basically "ganking." That is, finding and ambushing groups that are smaller/weaker/less aware.One thing that is complicated about ganking is that a group working together can usually outfight a group that is not. I think there is skill involved in choosing a group, learning to work with other group members and playing the role your character has in a fight.But the challenge is not exactly an intellectual one so much as it is one of learning to cooperate with others. The other is mass pvp which seems to pretty much justbelag-driven. Mass pvp really seems to me to be mostly about who has a high end enough computerthat they areable to do anything at all once large groups of players encounter each other. Plans in mass pvp seem to end up being pretty simple just because getting that many players to agree to and do anything very complicated is basically impossible.
I think my point is that the mechanics of the game are embarassingly simple, but that meeting, communicating and cooperating with other players is really what sets these kind of games apart.Andthat is the only really complicated and difficult thing about the game. Those who have mastered doing that do deserve credit for that skill but that is by no means limited to combat. Roleplaying and pvp bothrequire that you learn this skill, just that you apply it indifferent ways. It takes just as much (maybe more) skill to find ways to make what you do interesting or absorbing to others as an entertainer as it is to learn what to do and not to do in a fighting group.
But honestly the risks are pretty similar. If you die in pvp (or pve for thatmatter) all you get is downtime before you can get back to what you want to be doing. It works exactly the same for entertainers. If you are not successful in making enough money to just continue dancing you just have to go do something else you enjoy less until you can afford to dance some more. Time spent waiting in medical centers or camps for wounds to heal is no different to fighting characters than thetime spent running deliveries (or waiting around in a cantina) is to an entertainer . Alll boredom, all time waiting before you can get to whatever you think the "good parts"of the game areturn out to be equal.If someone thinks that the fighting downtime is somehow more glorious, honorableor whatever, it really is just self dramatization. Sure there is a bias in the game itself in favor of combat and against non-combat activities. The content and rewardsare prettyheavily skewed toward combat. But in fact I think that tends to contradict those who thing combat is hard and entertaining is easy. Entertainers have to work hard to eke enjoyment out of this game because there are so many fewer interesting things for them in the game.
"How could you possibly regurgitate that assertion, restating this ridiculous idea that other professions have more 'risk' than dancers, when the posts prior to yours all make convincing arguments that no profession endures any risk in this game?"
Beery,
Where is your convincing argument? Your only argument was saying w/o permadeath noone has a risk. You still have'nt refuted my argument. I told you that the ham wounds,equipment costs and lost time due todeath in combatare all risks. Combatants also suffer battlefatigue wounds so we have to go to cantinas periodicly to heal. If we play our character poorly we will be spending alot less time fighting and alot of time trying to heal wounds.
As a dancer you can advance through the entire proffession w/o moving even 1 foot in the game world after you reach a cantina. You also have no "required" costs to advance your character other then training costs which can be obtained for free from players. Wearing nice clothes might be fun but it is'nt needed to advance your proffession.A combatant has to fight against monsterAI which he might lose to which is in fact a risk, while a dancer has no such chance of failing in their advancement. Maybe if they had added a"dance dance revolution" gameplay mechanic where you had to outdance npcs to gain expI could say that dancers had some risk.
So that is where I rest my case about there beeing 0 risk involved in advancing through the dancer skill trees.
To address your original post question about why Dancing is regarded so poorly...
It boils down to the amount of AFK dancers people see in cantinas gaining exp w/o playing the game. You might not be doing this yourself but the amount of afk macroers in the game are the ones that make you lose respect. If you guys could actually get the devs to fix macroing you might get treated better. The sad part is it seems like you have alot of people "in this fourm" arguing to keep afk macroing in the game.
Eltestor wrote:
"To address your original post question about why Dancing is regarded so poorly...
It boils down to the amount of AFK dancers people see in cantinas gaining exp w/o playing the game. You might not be doing this yourself but the amount of afk macroers in the game are the ones that make you lose respect. If you guys could actually get the devs to fix macroing you might get treated better. The sad part is it seems like you have alot of people "in this fourm" arguing to keep afk macroing in the game.
If that is in fact your attitude it results from prejudice pure and simple and you ought to consider reappraising whether you should condemn those who do not play afk with macros because a few do. If you are prepared to make adverse assumptions about dancers let me suggest that you run a little experiment to test whether your conclusion has any basis in fact.Go to virtually any major city cantina (Coronet CIty, Theed and Mos Espa to name a few) and try intereacting with the enterainers there. Based on my experience while I was dancing to master, you will see 10 dancers actively interacting for every onewho is afk. If that little experiment demonstrates that in fact most dancers do not afk macro than what justifies your drawing an adverse inference against the 9 who came by their experience the same way you did?
Indeed, there are a lot of players out there who gotmasteries intheir respective professions based on game versions or under rulesthat are easier than the ones currently prevailing. Moreover there are a number of exploits that the developers have closed off that allowed significantly faster experience for some players. You would never presume thatany player or profession got an existing mastery through one of those methods but you are prepared to for dancers? Try judging other players by how they play the game.
Risk is not the only thing in life that has worth. The devs have worked very hard to make it so that risk is also not the only thing in SWG that has worth. One of the major accomplishments they have made is to create a game where people who want to do things OTHER THAN FIGHT can do so and can GROW and ADVANCE while doing other things. That is what SWG is, and if you cannot come to grips with that, I suggest you may find yourself more suited to another game. That is the reality of SWG, one that a great many people have clamored for for years now -- a reality where more than killing is rewarded. I for one hope to see it flourish, and wish that those who want merely to kill and think that only killing has any merit would go back to Quake where they can have their way and stop harassing and denigrating those who would seek other ways of playing this game.