Dancer Archive
Thread: 2 Hour mind buffs in 3 1/2 minutes.
This should be great news for those who want to churn out buffs like wildfire. But if its great news, why does this post not "feel right" to me? Perhaps its because when you do a /flourish every second you really aren't flourishing, but simply typing a command that drains one's action bar like a flourish, but not "flourish" in truth?
Don't get me wrong. The more we can figure out the science of buffing, the better. Still, I wonder what my clients will expect of me now...the ones that don't have access to the public-use buffbots.
All I have to say is that its a GREAT day for efficiency...
A tear for Madame Sirii Ajaan....
I can hear the /tells now:
Sirii: Buffbot busy? I'll take you dear!
2uber13374u: ROFL! Ya we hear uramoron cuz u actually think we like 2 see u dance. We just want da buff. lol
Sirii: I can do it fast if you want! I won't say a word! Promise!
2uber13374u: We'll only payu4 the 3.5 minutes buff. Ur lucky da buffbot is taken. lol.
Sirii: Just keep the stims commin' darling.
1337pwnerstarr: Can u do buff 4 me? Da buffbot is busy.
Sirii: 3.5 minutes darling....3.5 minutes.....
).Oh no no Hawaii, BLESS YOU DEAR! Its great to know the science behind buffing. It helps us to do it more efficiently. My comments were never to degrade what you are doing. Its just that in all likelihood, it willbe done bypeople who preprogram unattended macrosto dothese things, do it for free, and do it to get "the goodie" of a full strength buff without ever any thought to being "entertaining." As far as my flourish habits are concerned while doing a buff, I make myself a little macro that says this:
/setperform;
/pause 500;
/tell sirii *BUFF DONE*
Now I flourish at my own pace during this time. Yes, at a regular and even more active rate than usually. And then I try to engage the patron in conversations, crack jokes, talk about things to get their mind off the clocks. I've been doing buffs long enough that I have a certain "sense" when it is enough, and yes, its totally unscientific and more a matter of instinct over any researched and tested model. However, I'm rarely wrong, and what's more, when the buff IS done, my patrons usually say, "WOW! Do I really have to stop watching and go away?" Now THAT is the mark of someone who can TRULY be worthy of the title, "entertainer." I make you LOOK FORWARD to sitting 10 minutes with me over a 3.5 minute bot.
Now I agree the way I look at the profession is different than a lot of you all. I'm in the same camp as Sultrina, but whereas she does her craft by making the dances visually stunning, I do it by being a real hoot to spatial with. Either way, we both but showmanship over efficiency.
Because when you get right down to it, the entertainment professions are the ONLY ones where the mechanics don't make you better, and the loot doesn't make you better, and there is no such thing as a "Kryat Fleshwrap" that costs 1M credits to make your competition "pwned," (thogh the Jabba uber-leotard comes close, much to the dismay of people like me who know that, in the end, the loot only gives one excuses not to be a good performer more than anything else). But you see, that's why I love this profession! Its CHALLENGING in a way that no other profession is. It takes a real dedication to figuring out new ways to keep these people amused while we do things for them. Tough critics who act all tough on the boards like they don't care about what we do are some of my best customers, because they usually end up saying, "Wow Sirii! I didn't know how someone can make buffing FUN!"
Yes, there are a minority of people who are just potty mouths and spoil sports, and only want what they think they want, want it now, and to Dathomir with "showmanship." These are the same people who are usually booted frommy server for duping credits, or duping Kryat pearls, or kicked from their PAs, or scamming merchandise. Because these people never intended in the first place to play and interact with the world in the manner by which the developer's intended. They just only ever wanted to "outwit" the world by trying to prove to the world thatthey can play an inherently social game by being a jerk and still succeed.
Now am I saying your method of efficiency is wrong? Of course not.Discussing these things help people who read these boards understand the tools they have. However, the people who read these boards are comprised of those who actually "get it," and those who simply want their lot mule to be able to do something for their PA while their main character goes out to Dantooine doing 20K missions with free mind buffs. All unattended players HAVE is efficiency and convenience to compete with showmanship, and they can be much more efficient than any live player could ever be by virtue of the fact that they are NOT THERE. It is these such information helps the most.
I am sorry if this was a rather large post, but we all need to be reminded now and then that entertaining was NEVER about the game mechanics. BF, mind wounds, and buffs were only ever intended to be the reasons players came to us, but our showmanship was the reason that they are to STAY with us, tip us, and adore us. For how can you ever compete with an unattended alt. if they can do whatever you do with the same speed, potency, and skill, PLUS be perpetually available and work FOR FREE if it were not otherwise? You can't...that is, unless you work with the things that you can do BETTER than a bot. That's all I wanted to convey.
/endOldSchoolLecture
The next thing I would like to try (or maybe someone out there can and post the results) is doing multiple flourishes each second. For example (/flo 1;/flo 1;/pause 1;/macro repeat-macro). It may be that doing that will cut the time even more.
Hawaii wrote:
If you want to get people to say in the cantina, hang out, and socialize then you do that by entertaining them and being social, not by making them sit for 8 or 15 minutes to get a mind enhancement. Since when is entertaining about forcing other people into your play-style for as long as possible through game mechanics?
Ok, I don't like the whole "cantina hostage" situation any, but yes, forcing others to a "social play-style" is exactly what ent healing is supposed to be doing. That was the original concept (and current). I don't like it, I think Cantinas should be fun only, not forced. I think swapping dancer data and methods should be a big part of what this forum is about. I'm just not thrilled about teaching more bots how to do my only _game_ functions as well as I can.
Bots get on my nerves badly, I very strongly believe that if something can be fully automated and free, it doesn't need to be done by mule account bots, but should be done by the game itself instead. It screams of lack of content and should be redesigned. If you say that our main job isn't healing, it's entertaining the patrons... well, sure, but really I have a friend that is a CM/Rifleman, and he hangs out in the cantinas telling stories, doing crazy emotes, does CM "light shows", he basically entertains in the way you are describing.
A few dancing anims and the sing command is the only thing the class is giving me to be more "entertaining" to patrons than anyone else with my level ofsocial skills. Anyway, blah blah blah, I hate bots, we need more features or a whole lot less skill points used if we aren't going to get _anything_ in the way of game content... making this a class for people who are willing to have a skill sink for a neat title and a few things that could be done just as well with emotes (dances andtechs)OR a class for people who just want a buff bot is a bad bad bad idea. It lacks forethought and any element of game design. The two will forever be resentful and in the way of the other, and it excludes social players that want all of their spent skill points to have a real _game_ payout.
Wait, I'm still rambling aren't I? Anyway, I'm not coming after you Hawaii, you've been doing this much longer than I have and I want to swap info with you and everyone else. I just wish the bots weren't here to be soaking it up because I think there is absolutely no reason why they should be allowed to be needed. I played a buffing class in my first MMO, people in AOhad fixer mule accounts for easy access to all the fixer long termbuffs and goodies... it did not effect my ability to play a fixer any because I still had things to do (a) in a team out in battle (b) on my own as a fixer alone with the game and(c) while I did get nice tips for giving long term buffs in public places, it was never considered my only way to make money in that class by the game designers.
I started playing SWG because it's pretty. I wanted a pretty char that I could go run around in a pretty game environment wearing pretty clothes and getting pretty and fun loot. I also thought this would be one of the most social MMO's out there and I _like_ meeting people. I also thought it was meant to be a very skill based game (not 100%, but still skill based in part), but in a game that is even partially skill based, the "skill points" that you spend need to make sense and I just don't see that happening here. *sigh* Turning rant mode off, I'll post my numbers after I reround up my guinea pigs.
Last night I got a doc to buff my action/quickness/stamina then headed off to dathomir. I danced in the cantina for 3 hours. Giving 3.5 minute mind buffs. They rock!!! The patrons were very happy with the speed of the buff. I was able to buff just about everyone there. I had to literally go out on the street and drag people into the cantina to buff them. LOL. I had a great evening atk dancing and socializing and made quite a bit of money also 
RangerGirl, unless the doctor buff is verylow you should only need a Quickness enhancement. I make twice as many quickness packs as others because I always give then to entertainers free when there are nomedics around Sounds like you had a fun night.
Also don't forget, if you have more than one person to buff you can group with everyone at once, they simply watch you (no /setperform required) and they'll all be done in 5 minutes.
Panthu, I do sympathize with you. Really I do. I hate the state of the profession right now and it's my favorite thing to do in the whole game. But whether it's 8 minutes or 3 1/2 isn't going to change the people who setup and use "buff bots". What *would* change those people is that if ATK performers were available when and where they needed them. I don't think most people wantto pay $14/month for an extra account just to buff themselves. They just don't find what they need available through other players so they take matters into their own hands.
I think that having it be a shorter, more reasonable amount of time will also attract more causal players to get mind buffs, which means more real traffic in the cantina, and more potential people who will see the entertainment value of ATK performers and hang out and have fun.
And yes, entertainment healing (mind wounds and especially battle fatigue) is meant to bring traffic into the cantina. However, on my fighting character they never *have* to spend that long in the cantina. I usually visit before I get over 200 battle fatigue and that goes pretty quickly. Usually I'm fine in well under 2 minutes, depends on how often you drop by I guess
I think that entertainers need to accept that the game isn't going to provide them with a lot of content and find ways to be happy with what they do have. Forget about entertainer missions, it's not going to fix the profession no matter what they did. And in the worst case, everyone will be doing the missions and ignoring the players looking for healing and mind buffs leaving behind ONLY the buff bots.
What needs to happen is for the entertainers on each server to organize. Spread yourselves around so more cantina's have ATK entertainers available to heal and buff. DONT just go to theed/coronet because that's where the good experience is (*raises her hand as guilty of that too*).
One thingthat mightreally help is to use the chat system more effectively. Create a publicentertainers channel on your server and advertise it far and wide. Encourage people looking for healing or buffing to join the channel to locate those services. Encourage entertainers to join the channel and participate.
To create or join a channel double-click on your Spatial chat tab. Then click [Join Channel] and that will open the channel browser window. The top-level will be the name of your server, click on that to expand it and you will see a list of all the planets and also one called [Chat]. Click and open [Chat] and see what channels are already there. To create a channel under [Chat] highlight it and then click [Create Channel], make sure you create it public and not moderated (unless you want a private or moderated channel).
To talk in the channel you can use /<name-of-channel> <msg>
TIP: don't name the channel the same as an existing command.
You can also assign the channel it's own chat tab and remember you can "drag-and-drop" chat tabs so you can see multiple chat windows at once.
Thank you so much, Hawaii. I always appreciate the most technically arrurate data I can get my hands on. Being armed with exact data, I'm then able to chose for myself HOW to use it appropriately.
In my case, I believe that I will NOT over-flourish to maximize buff time, at least, not as a habit. I agree with the posters above that it's bad roleplay, and reduces us to buff-bots instead of dancers. But when needed, I'll know how to do it, or at least, how the mechanics work.
An entertainer chat channel is a great idea Hawaii, I wish I'd thought of it
Hawaii wrote:
snip
One thingthat mightreally help is to use the chat system more effectively. Create a publicentertainers channel on your server and advertise it far and wide. Encourage people looking for healing or buffing to join the channel to locate those services. Encourage entertainers to join the channel and participate.
snip
A group of us Ents do this on Bria. We have an Ent channel and if one is not present we set one up. Its a great way to organize and be aware of things; player events, on the fly parties, general info things of this nature.
As far as the super-speed buff...it works. 100% buff 2 hour duration. I'm knife-edge on this however. It works, but is it the way I want to do it. If we only knew the true game mechanics. I think i will experiment along these lines.