Dancer Archive

Yikes...

I did this a few weeks ago and it worked. I wonder if something in the new publish caused a bug?

Can anyone confirm this behavior? I already did the quests so I don't think I can re-do them to check it.

C

Message Edited by Lynnaea on 02-13-2005 09:56 PM

Its luck, unfortunately

Sometimes they just tell you crap, and other times they tell you what you need to know.

Keep changing dances a lot, and concentrate on the flourishes they tell you. If they don't tell you any flourishes then spread it somewhat evenly

That way, even if you hit their "hate-dance" it isn't that bad, if you keep changing through all available dances a lot (if they tell you a dance they like, change to that one more often), since the hate-dance is only danced for 10 or 20 seconds then.

I always did it that way and had no problem so far.

I still think it's bugged. I've helped a bunch of people and musicians do not get this problem nearly as often as dancers. In fact of about 10 to 15 of both dancer and musician that I've helped I saw it happen once on a musician and I know of only two dancers that it did not happen to at least once. Many dancers had it occur multiple times.

I just think its a flawed quest. So far I have gotten through the first 2 auditions - got audience help - did no good and just changed dances like mad until the crowd liked me - also changed florishes alot - avoiding ones they didn't like. I used no macros during time period either.

If this is just luck then they need to change the algorithm and alter the probabilities. They could easily take out the 'fluff' crap like the audience members telling you they don't like wookiees or think ewoks smell or the other stupidity that has zero to do with the dance number. All that does is make it take longer to find out the real info (what dances they like/hate).

Personally I think this whole thing needs to be re-worked. It is nice that they want to put a challenge in for a dancer but this is not a challenge, at least not in the sense of being a DANCE challenge. It does not test our knowledge or our skill.

How about things like this:

1. Have an NPC patron ask for a mind buff. Make sure the dancer knows how to do it properly (e.g. use /setperform, flourish a lot on the highest dance, etc). If they can't get a mind buff properly applied in X minutes, they fail.
   
2. Make us "mirror dance." Have a dancer NPC who randomly selects a different dance every minute for 10 minutes. You have 10 seconds to match her dance, and then she does 2 or 3 random flourishes and you have to match the ones she does. This determines if the dancers actually know the dance, and can visually tell the difference between, e.g., poplock 1 and 2, and know that the flourish is poplock flourish #3, not 4, 5, 8, whatever. (Same can easily be done for musicians).
   
3. Require us to "line dance" with an NPC. Group the NPC with us, and we have to bandflourish. This makes sure the dancer knows how to do that (band flourish). As you dance have the NPC /changedance and the player has to too... then the player controls the flourishes. In this and the other case, if the dancer STOPS at any time rather than /changedance, they fail -- makes sure they know how to change dances in mid-stream.
   
4. Require movement while dancing. That is, have them start at one point on the stage and -- only dancing, not stopping they have 120 seconds (or whatever) to get to another point. This can only be accomplished by dancing. If you stop you fail. You have to figure out what flourishes/dances to /change into and /flo to move you from one side of the stage to the other (or whatever). This makes certain the dancer can control his or her dances and doesn't bump into walls/furniture.
   
5. Provide an NPC musician and have the dancer dance to the music. Have the NPC change music at random times and the dancer has to change dances within X seconds to match the music. Tell the dancer before hand perhaps, what viable options they have for music (e.g., Footloose goes with Western; Popular or Poplock goes with rock and SW2, whatever). This makes sure the dancer not only can change dances but can recognize the different songs and knows how to switch dances as the musicians change the music.
   

The idea here is these dancers are supposed to be good to get the theatrical dance. The difference between a good dancer and one that isn't good is not that they heal wounds or know how to just flourish, but that they can do things like (1) apply a proper buff, (2) change dances without stopping, (3) recognize every dance and flourish in their repertoire BY EYE, (4) control their dances and have the ability to move from point A to point B without stopping the dance, and (5) dance to the music. Any good dancer can do these things.

THIS is what they should be testing. Not a glorified 'word problem' of whether you can figure out what people 'like to see'. If there were rhyme or reason to it then maybe it'd work but to just have us doing random dances and fourishes, it is kind of pointless and annoying. It is also frustrating because it has ZERO to do with being a good dancer.

Now I know most of you are thinking, "Oh come on those things you listed are easy." For good dancers, they are (except the moving part -- even for a good dancer it can be a challenge, hehe). But I have also known Master Dancers (usually AFK macroed once but not always) who had never heard of /changedance, who asked me "How did you just make me flourish?", or who could not tell what dance or flourish I had just done (!) even though they had all the dances. And we have all seen our share of dancers who, once they get exotic, seem to think it goes with every musical number in the game. (OK they don't really think that -- they are just doing whatever gets them the most XP per flo and screw making the dance match the music).

The idea should be to test the skill of the dancer at dancing not at solving a riddle. If they did that I'd be much happier.

Note I am not saying this because I was frustrated by the quest... I did every audience performance the first time. So this is not bitterness at failure here... I just was disappointed that I was solving a riddle instead of being asked to actually dance well to get the new dance.

C

Message Edited by kirah_ashlin on 02-15-2005 06:59 AM

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MyT_Chicken wrote:

Atleast you can get that far. I can't even get past the first audition with these NPC's.

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In my experience, the performances get easier as you progress through the quest... with the first one being the toughest to pass because the audience is the smallest so you have a reduced chance of getting any useful information from them.