Dancer Archive

I've been thinking a lot recently about the musician/dancer trees and the way the healing gets split to take up half of the skill tree.

It seems a bit like short shrift to have a function that doesn't benefit us at all getting broken up into two seperate functions that don't benefit us at all. It feels like the devs got in a rush and decided to just use "filler" to finish out the entertainer professions. IMO, there's really no good reason for mind healing to be seperated from fatigue healing. Is there any chance at all that some entertainer might decide to "specialize" in mind wounds? I'll wager that most of us don't even factor healing into our advancement plans except as something we have to do as a neccesary evil. Every musician or dancer I talk to who decides to forgoe master level also decides to forgoe ALL of the elite healing levels and spend the skill points elsewhere.

Ideally, I'd like to see mind and fatigue healing folded back into a single tree and have the mind tree replaced with something else. I'm not really sure what that could be. It would have to be something that wouldn't cause a huge problem due to the current masters already having "mastered" it.

One possibility - Performance recordings. I know it sounds wacky, but it could be interesting. The artisans would make the recording rods (plenty of those around as useless loot anyway). The musician/dancer would "record" a session of performance. The amount of time required would depend on the level of recording ability. A droid engineer would download the rod into a data module in a droid. A melee would activate the recording in a camp and receive a one-time mind would/battle fatigue healing session equal to the dancer/musician healing ability of the performer. The recording would then erase itself. (Chalk it up to copyright licensing. :smileyvery-happy This would only effect the owner of the droid, so each member of a hunt would need his own recording.The size of the data module would determine the number of recordings it could hold, or we could just have a rule of one per droid.

Imagine - A smuggler goes to the local droid store and asks "What's in stock today?" "I've got a FlawedDiamond, an Adara, and a Trubacca." "Gimmee the wookie, I'm in a jazzy mood today." The actual "recorded performance"animation would just be a generic "hologram" of a dancer or a musician, similar to the way that R2 projected Leia in A New Hope. The distinguishing factor would be the rate of healing due to the healing skill level of the entertainer that made the recording.

Of course, this would require some major changes to the game engine but it has the side benefit of creating an entire new chain of economic dependencies.

A different way to go would be to leave the skill tree as-is and make the elite healing skills meaningful. Let the novice and higher musicians and dancers use the outdoor stages to do their healing. The effectiveness and range would be proportional to their healing skill level. This would exclude their entertainment healing level so a novice dancer would heal the same outdoors as a novice entertainer heals indoors. The microphones would finally have a use and the masters would have some incentive to move out of the cantina and into some new venues.

Anyway, the gist is either make it worthwhile to have two healing branches or combine them and give us at least one other branch that IS worth having.

Comments? Alternative ideas?

I'm not sure about the tech on that but as a fan of the movies I'd get goosebumps watching a little R2 unit come up and start projecting a little holo image. Totally cool if they could implement something like that.. but I can see where it could get complicated. Just look at the stuff going on in the RL recording industry right now lol

I disagree completely that this is a 'function that doesn't help us', whether separated for music or dance or not. People *notice* that I can heal them faster than a newbie dancer or musician can. They comment on it, they tip for it, and in many cases, will literally ASK me to dance if I'm playing music, so that they can heal more quickly.

Healing of BF is one of the main 'points' of our profession. Yes, I love dancing, and I would dance whether I could heal BF or mind wounds or not. But the ability to is something that gets even people who would NOT normally come to the cantina in there.

Yes, it's completely horrid to level (thought not nearly as bad as it was early in beta thank goodness). When I was close to master, I went to Bestine to 'grind healing' because it is just too inconsistent in Keren, where the population is much lower. The key though is that once it is, a master performer truly provides a service to their customers, in that they can get them out the door two or three times faster than if there were only newbie dancers about.

As for the separate branches, I think they are valid, mostly because wounds are normally something that can only be healed by medics. By having separate branches, a dancer who can quickly heal mind wounds has shown that they have put in the necessary practice. (gained xp)

I don't disagree in the leastthat it would be useful to have some way to make ALLparts of our profession more interesting once mastership is achieved. The abilty to heal BF in camps, to make projections as you mention, or to pick and choose flourishes from any dance without using /changedance are just some examples.

To be honest, though, I suspect that this is an issue for all professions. Once you have achieved an Elite Mastery, you continue to practice your profession, whether it be hunting bounties or dancing. The idea is that you took the time to master it because it is also a passion, I suspect.

I'm coming at it from a different angle. I went into dancing because it was a support class and I could help the people in my PA get back out to the battle field faster. You know, every little contribution to the empire helps, even if it's behind the scenes. It would be nice to heal BF in camps so I could truely be a combat dancer.. like the USO. I see wounds and fatigue as separate trees.. it's the technique tree which drives me batty. It's got some pretty eye candy but NO ONE benefits from it. We don't get experience to use it and no one heals any faster because of it. It looks cool but it esentially useless.

Min'Tora Ehi

I'm in total agreement with Mivora. The manual and various things in the game imply that entertaining is a support class, but master dancer really doesn't change that much. The time difference is usually so minimal in healing it's not worth mentioning. Maybe once more people start going to remoted planets they will rack up the wounds and bf a lot more. But then who wants to sit in a cantina waiting for someone with massive healing needs to come in. Come on DEVS, make us useful in camp!!!!

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AdaraX wrote:

As for the separate branches, I think they are valid, mostly because wounds are normally something that can only be healed by medics. By having separate branches, a dancer who can quickly heal mind wounds has shown that they have put in the necessary practice. (gained xp)

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I look at it this way: Any branch of a profession is one that offers unique opportunities within that profession. A player might conceivably choose to follow that branch and no others in that profession just to get the unique skills offered by that branch. I can see someone choosing to specialize in effects. I can see someone choosing to specialize in songs. I CAN'T see anyone choosing to specialize in fatigue or mind wounds.Even medic, which is ALL about healing, doesn't break down intohealth and action branches. It breaks down into healing speed, healing effeciveness, foraging, and crafting.

I'll backpedal slightly. A player who sees entertainer as a combat support class (and there are those who insist on looking at us that way) might push through to novice musician/dancer in order to specialize in mind wound healing in camps. I'd submit that this is not your average entertainer.

I'll cut the developers one bit of slack - Most likely, entertainer itself was originally designed with seperate branches for mind wound and battle fatigue and they got folded together when image design was moved into entertainment instead of being a full basic profession of its own. Given the current state of affairs, though, I just don't see that it's neccesary or desirable to have to branches that are functionally identical for most people's purposes. I'd rather have a branch that stands on its own as something unique and useful.

here here Slick!!!

I've enjoyed my dancing up until I hit the novice stage, where there is not much to look forward to.... save erotic dancing and the title of Master.

I'd like to see some other things in our tree.

just my thoughts

-Miragel

I too feel the separate trees are somewhat of a waste. I would like to have seen skills related to setting up a group performance. Perhaps specialized band flourishes which can only be performed while grouping. This would lend a little more excitement to the title "choreographer". Lower levels in the tree might allow dancers to execute /bandflo for a small number of dancers, while higher levels would allow a more a more skilled dancer to /bandflo with a larger troupe.

So far, I have yet to see any sort of organized dance performances. There is a great deal of potential for putting on shows especially in private venues where an access fee could be charged. When I make master one of my goals is to try to organize such an event. A room full of master entertainers is really something to experience.