Dancer Archive

ugh.. rumor control sucks.. but it's best that it starts early..

rumor has it that mind DAMAGE will be stim healable.. which in no way affects mind WOUNDS..



having said that.. i'll answer your questions..

1.. no noticable change..

2.. multiple reasons.. they're already in game and working moreorless as intended (much moreso than other professions comparatively speaking).. people want some 'sense' of the SW universe they don't see in melee combat and compositie clones.. dancers/musicians provide some of this.. dancers/musicians lend a focal 'gathering spot' to hang out and shoot the breeze

3.. why shouldn't they?? i saw more entertainers (with the exception of ID's sadly) in the movies than i did TK's fencers.. swordspeople and pikepeople..
personally i love the music of SW in general.. and if it were possible.. i'd drag a musician with me wherever i go and give them 1/2 my mission payouts if they could keep the music going.. it's worth it to me.. sadly limited game mechanics prevent this.. as for dancers.. some prefer 'eye candy' to 'ear candy'.. *shrug.. to each their own..


Saborcoco.. on a personal note.. i'd like you to pause next time you make a post.. and understand the implications of the statements you make and how they might be percieved..
I have read enough of your posts in the CM and CORE forums to believe that these kinds of posts are not meant to be flamebait.. but could easily be seen as such by those unfamiliar with you..

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Saborcoco wrote:

Theres been rumors of items that will heal mind and mind wounds in the future... If these was to happen,

1. what would happen to dancers?

2. Why would dancers exist?

3. Why should dancers exist?

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"1. what would happen to dancers? 2. Why would dancers exist? 3. Why should dancers exist?"

Questions only the devs can answer. I've given up trying to figure out what insanity drives their decisions, especailly where the social professions are concerned.

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Saborcoco wrote:

Theres been rumors of items that will heal mind and mind wounds in the future... If these was to happen,

1. what would happen to dancers?

2. Why would dancers exist?

3. Why should dancers exist?

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Careful, there, Saboroco. One could get the impression that you think dancers don't have a place in the game. I will assume, however that that is not what you intend, and that you are just asking.

Before I address your question I would first ask this. Why should TKM's exist? Why should Doctors exist? Why should any other profession exist in this game? Two reasons that I can think of: each profession accomodates a certain playstyle, and each profession has a particular game mechanic. Each profession is required to be played a certain way, and that play style needs to appeal to a certain type of player or else no one would play it. Also, each profession needs some game mechanic that it can perform that is unique in some way or that it can perform better than any other method of achieving that mechanic or else it would be redundant or pointless. If there were some profession like say, Mortician, whose play involved removing all the corpses from hunts, PvP battles and so on, it might be made to be necessary for the game, but if that's all that it did, it's unlikely anyone would play it. That might be an example of a poor play style. On the other hand, if there were a profession like Magician, that could do magic tricks in the game, but served no game mechanic whatsoever, then it might not attract many people to it for it's lack of mechanic. Now even though there might be some who would want to play it anyway, there would be little point in the devs spending their time on developing, maintaining or even enhancing this profession, so from a business standpoint it's not even practical. This is an example of the need for an important game mechanic.

As to your question specifically, for one, you're asking a question merely about a rumor so there may be no point in answering it if the rumor is not even true to begin with. Second, even if it is correct, it may be missing some important information. Perhaps there is a new game mechanic being introduced that you don't know about that might be added to the Ent. professions, so again, there would be no point in answering the questions. Finally, even if you are correct and there is no further information to know or consider, then the answer to your first questions would be that we would still be mind buffers, and that would still be our game mechanic that we can do better than chef foods or any other mechanism. As for your final question, that was answered in the previous paragraph.

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Saborcoco wrote:

The reason I am asking is not to disqualify the importance of dancers but just to know why people think they are important...... I am considering changing to dancer or musician but cant decide and I though that if i had some knowledge of why they are important I could make a better choice.

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Because different people have different playstyles. For example, there's the uber-leet-I-kill-everyone-in-pvp player. They'd hate games like The Sims Online. However, lots of people love it.

This game attempts (in theory) to cater to several different playstyles. Entertainer and it's elites is in the game for socal players who would rather have a huge friends list than be the first Jedi, or the uber-PVPer.

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Fallsguy wrote:

There maybe a few less dancers

Still theres battle fatigue to deal with combine with combat revamp - you'll be seeing more players with this problem.

Dancers are good for mind buffs, and the old battle fatigue. Then player events it would be nice to see more entertainers at weddings PVP events, Dueling events etc.......

I hope dancers stay in game.

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I wasn't aware there was an effort underway to take them out.

It's a difficult question.

I'm going to answer from the standpoint of why are Entertainers important, including Entertainers, Dancers and Musicians.

I've been guilty of saying before that my purpose in game is to heal and buff, to be a support class with a different face from a doctor.

That's not untrue, but to be honest it's not the real reason why we're here. It's the tool we use.

Our purpose, very simply, is to make people come to the cantina. Heals/buffs are the honeyed stick we were given to use.

Now, why do we want to make people come to the cantina?

As Nacoa mentioned, it's partly because of the goal of this game to cater to the four archetypical gaming playstyles in a way that sets the foundation for people to continue playing instead of playing for 2 months and quitting. If you can have an outlet for social (dancing when you're in the mood), achieving (crafting weapons when you're in the mood), killing (PVPing when you're in the mood) and exploring (tracking/taming pets when you're in the mood) you're more likely to enjoy yourself and stay around (and consequently keep paying your $15/mo). Otherwise you grind to master, get bored and burned out and quit.

But the other thing we need to have in game for that system to work is a community. A living, breathing community where everybody knows your name, so to speak. A community with a stable working economy and happy productive members. This is the trade-off for a relaxed level grind (i.e. not like EQ's eternal treadmill) -- that while you level you become part of the community and make friends to interact with post-master. I think we can all pretty much agree, at this point, that this has failed. For a while it was sort-of-but-not-quite working, but since about the beginning of the year, if not a bit before, it's completely fallen apart and I've been seeing more people quit as of late than I can remember in quite a while. We had a glimpse of this right after launch, and.. I miss that. I miss it a lot.

So where do entertainers fit into this, since that's the topic?

Entertainers are supposed to bring people to the cantinas and create the environment that fosters and developes the community. In theory, when you want to go out hunting, you're supposed to go to the cantina to find a group that wants to hunt the same thing you do, and you go out and work together to accomplish that. If you're a smuggler and you have a new factory run of spice, you're supposed to go hang around the cantina until you see people chatting about how if they had just had one more boost during that last fight they wouldn't have died. If you're a tailor you can watch for people who need fashion advice. A chef can sell brandy to people they see getting mind buffs. A central meeting/market place where everyone goes sometimes, if even just for a few minutes. Making Entertainers anchored in the cantinas and required to heal BF is supposed to be the catlyst for community development.

But sometime back last.. oh, august, september or so.. cantinas stopped being fun, didn't they? And they turned into nothing but AFK spammed "tip me heal me" fests, the community at large lost all respect for entertainers (live or otherwise) and it's been downhill since then, eventually bottoming out into what we have today -- bots who cater to the very extreme of NON-community and isolationism, the antithesis of what an entertainer is really meant to be, and who've destroyed the very last vestiges of the community the live of us were trying to hold on to.

So the answer is both very simple and very complicated. We use our healing and buffing skills to encourage people to come to the cantina.

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Saborcoco wrote:

What do you mean by Flamebate somerandomuser?

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i think this sums it up nicely...

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DanceRulez wrote:

Careful, there, Saboroco. One could get the impression that you think dancers don't have a place in the game. I will assume, however that that is not what you intend, and that you are just asking.

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what i was saying is that your comments could easily be misinterpreted by others.. especially by those that don't have the famialiarity of your previous posts..
in the past i've seen what you've had to say.. and had experienced your personality thru your posts elsewhere so i was able to gather what you were trying to convey.. whereas others might not understand and take your remarks deragatory toward their profession etc..

some persons do this intentionally in effort to provoke negative reaction.. in those cases the term for such instances is flamebait.. as in a person is goading others to make inflamatory comments..

that make any sense?

-edit closing html font tag..

Message Edited by somerandomuser on 09-29-2004 04:46 PM