Dancer Archive
Thread: Positive Thinking vs. the plague of AFK Macroing
I am happy to see that they figured out a way to keep people from being able to be healed, but I think it would be a much better approach to have a provide service function rather than deny. It would create a positive social exchange with anyone who wished to watch you, and would keep entertainers from having to vigilantly watch for people they want to deny service to entering. I personally suffered a grievous sexual harrassment assault from another player and spent several hours near the end of mastering dance sitting in the cantina because after 2 weeks my report was still unread and he refused to leave. There was no way for me to not heal his mind except by not dancing. Having deny rather than approve makes us still have to watch out for these kind of people, rather than having the enjoyable exchange of seeing friends or new acquaintances and performing for them or healing. I hope that in time it is seen that approve would be better than deny towards the purpose of fostering positive choice interrelating between players. (something I picked up in my college classes of classroom management heheh)
Another thing is that AFK macroing is really beginning to have a negative impact. I never once macroed my entire way to master dancer, away from the keyboard or at it. I hit every flourish myself. I have spent a great deal of time observing the problem of diminishing tips and respect for the entertainer profession, and the culprit on the lips of the warriors who make jokes about us never fails to be afk macroing. Learning the profession and doing the work yourself is part of the game play process. Those of you who don't put in the time yourself cheapen the art and are causing much more damage than you realize. People used to tip much more consistently than they do now, because now they assume everyone in the cantina is afk macroing. This is a blight on our profession, and a very very easy way to solve it would be by having provision of service rather than denial. If we actively chose who we heal, we choose to gain entertainment healing experience (those of us who still need to gain it). This would inherently prevent people from being able to get to master of a profession without ever actually being at their computer except to reset their macro cycle. And yes - that does happen very very often. Other professions lack respect for entertainers because of the entertainers that lack respect for entertainers. I sincerely hope that the developers read this and see that the only people who really have an objection to approving rather than denying are people who don't really play the game at all. I know it would make those of us who put in hours and hours of time striving to become the best at something for which we have a lot of love (or else why would we do it, really) feel a lot more positive that what we do actually is an important feature of the game community.
I wish much love and respect to all of you, and I sincerely hope that those of you who do afk macro reconsider what you are doing.
P.S. If you are a developer and read this, PLEASE do something about master dancers falling :-) It shouldn't happen!!! heheheh
Hear, hear. I no longer have enough points to become the dancer I always wanted to be, but I completely agree with a "provide service" mentality over a "deny service" or "provide to all except X." I would love to see something like a dialog box pop up that says, "This person wishes to watch your performance. Do you wish to heal him?" and you click OK.
This would, as you say, prevent the AFK macro syndrome. If the person wants to advance, she has to be there to push the OK button. It prevents XP from being diverted to the AFK players. It will mean that dancers will be able to see a true balance between the time spent dancing and the reward given for healing, so you can get the proper XP balance. (Right now I suspect a lot of AFK dancers get healing XP because the shooters know they don't have to pay the AFK ones, and can get free service.)
Escia
FishWan wrote:
Hear, hear. I no longer have enough points to become the dancer I always wanted to be, but I completely agree with a "provide service" mentality over a "deny service" or "provide to all except X." I would love to see something like a dialog box pop up that says, "This person wishes to watch your performance. Do you wish to heal him?" and you click OK.
Please, God, NO! I do not want to endure another endless click fest like they made fishing. Interrupting chat and trades with the cascade of request boxes this would start would be enough to drive all of us away from the class - except those of us who aren't even at our keyboards and so don't care.
Actually I think it is an excellent idea. So you have to click. Deny service does nothing because of the high number ppl who macro afk. Personally I feel macro should be deleted from all public institutions . Everyone works...goes to school ..etc..earn your pts as the game intended. Think macros were made to make job easier to do other things like converse in entertainer instance..not to get experience while you sleep geez. If little click bothers you then I cant believe you even bother playinga game. Lately have seen 95% entertainers being afk permanent..not even a hi when they come on except for request for group. Ppl who do this consistantly...I boot from group. Why should they benefit from group increase exp when ones not afk doing all the social interaction while they sleep or are at work?
Also for the ones that moan at the style of dress at cantina (those strange ones that feel it is only proper to wear a ballgown). A cantina is same as a bar doh. I love wearing ballgowns myself but have no problem at all with dancers who wear bodywraps, skin wraps, shorts and shirt or whatever. How many bars have you been in that ppl wore ballgowns? None. Myself I find it a nice change to wear the lovely gowns but come on. Theaters are the place wear gowns should be necessary attire. Do wish guys could have suit type clothes for that too. Lets try to not tear each other apart out loud in game as it is usually the one making the ugly remark that looks bad anyway...but also diminishes respect by others. If you have a problem wth someone pm it to them or groupchat please..lets be a little professional.
Indeed... We will see a day when all xp gain must be actively earned, but the devs have a lot to work out at the moment and are getting there. Take surveying for example, its nearly impossible to afk sample and the point is who can you become experienced if you aren't actually doing anything.
As far as providing service as opposed todenying service simply promotes positive player interaction. Denying service will simply result in a flurry of obscenities, such as seen in almost all pvp. When was the last time you heard someone say "Wow that was a nice shot? I hope to fight you again. Take care!"
Actually I was having a really interesting conversation with my husband about this. (He's gotten his own account now lol). It had started out about the tip begging issue but evolved to a good comparison.
I had a high-level Meta-Physicist character in Anarchy Online. For those who never played - MPs could buff skill points for a period of time - helping them load a 'nano spell', equip armor, that kind of thing. We could also build little implant thingies that helped skill points permanently. Of course as you got higher up you could buff more and more skill points. People would have to ask for a specific buff and you'd cast your nano on them. Some people charged up front,othersaccepted non-mandatory tips, very few did it completely free accepting no tips at all. Spend a day in a crowded area and you could make a tidy sum just by accepting the tips. The rationale behind charging or accepting tips (completely different things imho) was that they were paying for your time standing around for them plus all the time spent working to be able to load and cast those buffs. You pay highly for doctors and lawyers- they spend a long time working to be able to help you more efficiently; but that's another argument altogether. There were some Mps that would keep '-bleep- lists' and refuse service to people that tipped them badly or been rude to them so that gave them some control in how they were treated too.
Anyway, Mr Pendent pointed out that if people had been able to just walk up and get what they needed from an mp few would have followed any kind of tipping honor code. Which is essentially what goes on with entertainers. Sure, we actually get experience from what we do while the MPs only made experience from killsbut this is what has made SWG distinctive from the other games - the fact that experience can be gained from practicing within your specialty not just killing things.
It would be a whole different ballgame if, say, a player comes into the cantina and requests the services of a dancer. The dancer grants the request and let the healing and experience gains begin. That could potentially cut down on the afk grinds too btw. That way people can still come to the cantina to socialize but if they want healing, they'd have to request it. Sure there's the possibility of people charging huge fees but players would naturally gravitate to entertainers that didn't overcharge or gave a service that equalled what the player thought it was worth.
Just an idea 
I'm sorry but this is such a bad idea on so many levels.
First of all, on a busy night I want to have to click on every single person that walks in the door... talk about having no time to talk! This reason alone would make so many good entertainers just leave the profession, or so many people to hate the profession because it took them 10 minutes to get an entertainer to realize they were in the cantina.
Second of all, it's people who think they have to "vigilantly watch for" people that you want to deny that makes me soooooooo glad deny resets everytime you log in. I mean, I see so many dancers who freak out over something as simple as a bar fight and it is just ridiculous... half of the planet would be on deny if it carried over.
The tip situation gets better by the day in my experience... I just disagree on that point.
Finally, the lack of respect for entertainers is minimally due to AFKers. One of the major reasons people don't respect entertainers that much is because there is nothing involved in getting to master - nothing except hitting flourish buttons. Now I know plenty of people that respect me as a person in-game, but none of them respect me for sitting at my computer hitting buttons and mastering an entertainer field. Of course if there are AFKs around some people will comment about them... it doesn't mean that is the reason they don't respect the class overall though.
Look, if you want to be "the best" at dancing, it involves a lot more than being a master dancer. I can tell you, I am not at all impressed with the master level dances... I hate them to be quite honest. I quit dance and became a master musician because of them. Anyway, if you want to be the best, as I said, you need to be the best entertainer that you can be... and that has little to do with what dances you know.
When I enter my regular cantina next, I am going to announce that I am putting together a group of Live Entertainers to chain missions from the terminal right outside. I think this will be positive in a couple of respects. People in the group will be live and participating in the group. They will be earning money without having to beg or starve (Not a ton of money, but if everyone in the group chains the missions, we should do ok).
We had about half the group in Coronet doing chained entertainer missions last night. We had a blast. The excitement of watching the money 'jackpot' in was very cool.
Kyree Shvar - Master Dancer