Dancer Archive
Thread: Yay, and thanks to all you AFK Macro-ers
Tiaga wrote:
Coronet is the best travelled place anywhere, and so therefore it's cantina is. Why? Corellia is the hub of most the adventure planets, therefore Coronet gets a good chunk of the traffic to those worlds.
But you've shown you just like to argue for the sake of arguing, so it's impossible to hold a real debate with you.
Actually, I think Meeuki finally made somesalient points. Many of the arguements here against AFKers, and really the only one I find valid, is that the roleplay/chatty aspect of the entertainer's life is diminished; AFKers cannot roleplay, and their silence encourages customers and patrons to be quiet too. Valid point. But Meeuki actually delves into the realm of the relevant by asking the questions he/she asks above. If the concern is exclusively about roleplay/chat, then why not acknowledge that there are many better places?Excellent points being made about other places being better lit, prettier, more highly trafficked, etc. Those are good points. All the other points about AFKers and how they diminish the profession I've found weak and/or invalid. This is the one I think is a ligitimate concern, but one that could be so easily addressed by simply moving to a different venue. Why stay so chained to the Theed/Coronet cantinas?
It's easy...all you have to do is use the "shift" button...you know...the one that's to the left of the Z and to the right of the / on the keyboard. All you have to do is hit it at the start of a sentence for example. This is starting a sentence with a capital letter. And also correct sentence structure also states that when using i in a meaning of speaking about one's self, to capitalize it as well...for example. I am writing this down.
meeuki wrote:
and no i won't "learn" how to use capitals.
for all you people who think afk dancing is going (eventually) go the way of the dodo, let me ask you this.
how?
if i afk all night i don't ever go <afk>. how do you ask? beats the crap out of me, but the game shows me as ATK alot of the time. perhaps it has something to do with my macro, who knows. so anyway, removing XP gains when afk won't help
ok so you say, disable looping macros, they only really help killstealers and afkers right? one line of code is all it would take to remove afking from the game forever. well then why haven't they done it? why not remove /ui action toolbarSlotxx ?
would the interface be impacted that severly be removing that command? at the expense of what is supposedly ruining 3 professions? (four if you count ID).
my money is on no, yet they do nothing.
why not claim its a EULA violation and let conscience/fear/reports clean up the game? that would be an easy solution woudln't it? yet jeassa comes here and puts the nail in the coffin for that idea.
you see what i'm getting at here? your concerns are minor. there's a reason raven hasn't put afk on the top 5. he realizes what i know, that the developers will do nothing, they've already quietly sidestepped this afk issue and my money is they will never (or at least not in the foreseeable future) do anything to combat it.
ASIDE from making the game more fun to play ATK. how are they going to make it more fun for you if you say the only way to have fun is in your drab cantinas???
If your head hurts at this point, please check to make sure that you aren't banging it against a wall or some other hard surface. Mine's still throbbing.
FYI, this post has been entered automatically by an advanced macro while I was AFK. Don't forget to tip your AFK forum campers!
Carry on.
- J
truth be told, every one of my posts is an afk post. i'm trying to ruin your forum too.
8P
"truth be told, every one of my posts is an afk post. i'm trying to ruin your forum too."
You killed Kennedy too, didn't you?! 
It was meeuki on the grassy knoll!
Sorry, but I'm not going to post on topic, I don't wish to bang my head against the wall.
My Christmas holocron told me to Master Dancer. I also set up an AFK macro to do this. I put in my away message though saying this and to not tip me, just give me a heal if my action runs low.
I also headed off to Nym's Stronghold cuz I figured there is never anyone there, and I'm sure some people would love an afk entertainer there.
I could see why people would afk though, BORING!!!!!!!
meeuki wrote:
the afks overrun 2 cantinas. 2. all the others are empty. they got fed up because they had no interest in entertaining only chatting in theed.
what don't you people get about IT'S NOT GOING TO STOP. it's time to stop being bastiges about it and find alternatives. your pitiful gray theed/coronet chatrooms are DEAD. move on.
Why do you keep saying there are only two cantinas? Which two are you thinking of? Off hand, I can think of more than two cantinas that have AFKers on my server. Theed, Coronet, Bestine, Anchorhead, Nym's Stronghold, Yavin's Mining Outpost, Moenia...oh, and let's not forget the cantina that GreatSails talked about.
So you are fortunate enough to find cantinas without AFKers healing everyone up before you get there? Good for you. What server are you on where live entertainers can hop on and find empty cantinas to play in? Although, you have admitted that you also AFK entertain, so which of those two cantinas do you play in, and do you plan to move to one of the empty cantinas so that we know not to go there?
You are most fortunate that AFK entertainers only practice in two cantinas on your server. I'm very happy for you. For the rest of us who have to hop around to find an appreciative audience, things are not as easy.
But you are 100% correct that this problem will not go away. We have to adapt to the situation, and the situation is that the game is no longer conducive to the energetic bands in the cantina. The noise and visual pollution are just too much. What immediately springs to mind are a) Go find a private cantina and hope that the city can attract the right people and b) do what so many people have suggested and pick up a gun and make a living doing something else. I did that, but it's because I wanted to. Someone who doesn't want to kill things can only stick with a.
And I guess we don't have to listen to, "Where did all the Entertainers go?" anymore. If they want entertaining, then they will have to seek us out. If they just want healing...well, there's plenty of that going around for free.
Ryche_Mykola wrote:
My Christmas holocron told me to Master Dancer. I also set up an AFK macro to do this. I put in my away message though saying this and to not tip me, just give me a heal if my action runs low.
I also headed off to Nym's Stronghold cuz I figured there is never anyone there, and I'm sure some people would love an afk entertainer there.
I could see why people would afk though, BORING!!!!!!!
This here is another reason that you don't see entertainers on the advanced planets. It doesn't matter if you put in your AFK message to tip you or not, you are still giving out a service for free that alot of entertainers depend on. If you take alot of the entertainers who mastered dance, and musician, and Image design...that's it for them....no more skillpoints to do any type of fighting or anything else. Plus because the people see the AFK'er in the cantina they feel like they don't have to TIP the ones who are actually there playing and worked at the keyboard very hard to provide the service of healing battle fatigue and wounds, plus try to drum up some conversation to make the time pass by quicker, not only for the dancer/musician but for the person getting healed.
So, I guess there is another reason that the AFK'ers are destroying the profession is by taking the tips away from the ones who need them.
I went to the advanced planets, Lok, Dantooine, Dathomir and you know what I got for my trip, not one thing because people don't feel they should have to tip the entertainers since they are part of the gameplay and don't deserve to be tipped, even though they were pulling down 25k missions and getting 2-3 of them before needing to be healed up.
But I have to /applaud C though for yes, I have tried the other cantinas, which are now nothing other than breeding zones for AFKers. And as for Tiaga's point...he has an AFK free cantina and will boot people if they go afk while dancing or playing /cheer.
And Meekui, they will do something about it...and no...people will not be able to find a way around it....you can make the argument that they found a way around the sampling, but it takes 4 times as long to do something than it used to before the pop-up windows came up...and while I was sampling the other day, I had the window pop up 4...yes 4 times in a row.
And with Coronet being the central hub for all travel...it is...and people tend to goto the cantina there...which is why alot of people frequent it who are master dancer/musicians enjoy going there to play with other people.
Oh, and Meekui...learn to use some capital letters, ok?
Ptetroski-- Master Dancer, Master Tailor
Kettemoor
Greatsails wrote:
Tiaga wrote:
Coronet is the best travelled place anywhere, and so therefore it's cantina is. Why? Corellia is the hub of most the adventure planets, therefore Coronet gets a good chunk of the traffic to those worlds.
But you've shown you just like to argue for the sake of arguing, so it's impossible to hold a real debate with you.
Actually, I think Meeuki finally made somesalient points. Many of the arguements here against AFKers, and really the only one I find valid, is that the roleplay/chatty aspect of the entertainer's life is diminished; AFKers cannot roleplay, and their silence encourages customers and patrons to be quiet too. Valid point. But Meeuki actually delves into the realm of the relevant by asking the questions he/she asks above. If the concern is exclusively about roleplay/chat, then why not acknowledge that there are many better places?Excellent points being made about other places being better lit, prettier, more highly trafficked, etc. Those are good points. All the other points about AFKers and how they diminish the profession I've found weak and/or invalid. This is the one I think is a ligitimate concern, but one that could be so easily addressed by simply moving to a different venue. Why stay so chained to the Theed/Coronet cantinas?
I was more referring to his trolling the other recent AFK thread. However for your question I think I have a good answer. Several good answers, actually.
There are really two classes in the entertainer class. (Ignoring Image Design here.) I'm not talking about dancers and musicians, I'm talking about mind healers and entertainers. Those are the two aspects of being an entertainer in SWG. There are people who are purely mind healers. They could care less how they do it, they are just there to heal. I am including pure hologrinders and other profession grinders in this category, because they are just playing the mechanics of the class, which happens to be mind healing. On the other extreme is the entertainers. They are the ones who don't care what their performing is actually doing, they are there to perform. Roleplayers fall in this category. As do people who just see the game as a chatroom. (Not sure if there are any of these or not, but including it anyway.)
The mind healer will be found in one of two places. They will either be in Theed/Coronet grinding, running a macro the entire time, and AFK the entire time. Now don't jump on that last statement and say you aren't AFK the entire time, let me finish. Or they will be in their guild's cantina, PA hall, house in the middle of nowhere, whatever. They will be there performing a service for whatever group. They will also be AFK and running a macro. In either case, if they aren't a pure heal bot, they will only be there when the player isn't actually playing.
For the entertainer, I won't go with where they will be found. It is appropriate for the mind healer, since they are AFK and so don't really move. For the entertainer, I'll cover where they would like to be. This is again one of two places. If they are a roleplayer, they would like to be where people roleplay. This used to be the cantinas, but it is hard to roleplay with zombies, so they became bitter about that. Many quit, some went to other places, as you suggested. I know many people in both categories. The chat room people would like to be in a crowded cantina. I mean, a cantina with lots of players there, not just lots of people. They can go to Theed or Coronet and find lots of people, but most of them are AFK. They too bare bitter about this.
Now that I've covered both extremes, very few people fall solidly in only one of those categories. I do know a few, but I could probably count them on one hand. Even the usual career AFKer still is at the keyboard a little. And some roleplayers use macro grinding as a means to the end they want for their character. But most people do fall towards one side or the other. And I don't just mean the dancers falling.
The people who are pure entertainers have gone elsewhere. However, as I said, most people are not one or the other. Therefore, even someone who may be "roleplay light" will still have some mind healer mentality, so won't be so eager to leave the spots for good healing.
Now I said I have more than one reason. The big other one is game mechanics. Even roleplayers are bound by them. In the end, to get master dancer or musician, you need healing xp. A lot of it. I can only thing of one person who has stayed pure RP and never gone to grind healing xp at some point. Not saying there aren't more, just none I know of. In my case, my motivation for becoming musician was wishing I could play the narlagon every time I walk by it. The rest of musician was only the icing on that. So I went to Theed and Coronet. Those are the places to get the best healing experience. There comes a point that if you want to be the best, you have to start healing people. So game mechanics forces people to go where the best healing is. To be honest, pure roleplayers are not the ones bothered by AFK people. It is the people who want both. They want to be able to roleplay AND play the game. The roleplayer mentality says go find real people to roleplay with. The grinder mentality says stay where the xp is. This is a source of a lot of frustration, and lessened enjoyment of the game because instead of doing two things they like at the same time, they have to split them up and only do one at a time.
The reason this debate rages on so much is neither side really sees eye to eye with the other. The entertainers see music, dance, an ability to do routines, sing songs, and in general do a bunch of entertaining things. The mind healers sees a means to get people in and out, get xp, maybe even get tips. All game mechanics stuff. People who mostly care about roleplaying but still have some desire to play to game mechanics try to convince other people they should at least be there playing the game. They put it in terms of game mechanics, assuming that is what the mind healers will understand. This is where you get all the people saying it hurts tips, it hurts xp when there are ungrouped AFK people being watched, it hurts the image of the class that you can just macro your way to master, etc. These are fairly often refuted with plenty of anecdotal evidence, and the image is then cast that the issue is only about game mechanics, and that people are just trying to force others into their playstyle.
However, I put to you that the people bothered most by this are already being forced into a playstyle. More specifically, they are forced to choose between their playstyles, when they want to have them both separately.
Needless to say, I've come to realize the issue goes much much deeper than just people doing things AFK. It is also something quite unique to the entertainer class.
i'm not saying afking doesn't suck i'm just saying it doesn't ruin the profession.
but imo there are simple solutions. why does everyone cling so tight to the nasty cantinas the developers offered up to us? they aren't getting any better. there are no plans that i am aware of for them to get any better. why not just ditch them altogether? seriously, leave them for the AFKers. there are more populated areas of the game.
consider this... half xp payout for healing bf and wounds outside of the cantinas (but inside cities). half xp payout for dancing outside cantinas. what afker in their right mind would go for that deal? half advancement? there's no way.
but what real entertainer wouldn't? imagine being able to put on a show at those music stations outside the coronet starport, *and* be able to do a service to the community too. what higher traffic area is there in the game besides the squares outside coronet starport and theed? what more fantastic place is there to dance than the outside cafe/stages stuck on theater guildhalls? you could set up healing but not xp bonuses in areas, and inform the playerbase that if you go there you'll be healed faster... orget a % bonus to their buff. there are a billion things i can think of to make it so people *want* to come see dancers that also let people who want to afk do their thing too.
but it honestly seems to me like the majority of the dancing community wants the theed chatroom and won't accept anything less than the theed chatroom. street performing, better venues, making people actually want to come watch instead of simply making them watch are lesser concerns it seems. it's almost like the whole community was used to living in a box.....
wait....