Dancer Archive

(There are a few problems with the formatting of my letter with the way the boards show things, so this isn't exactly the way it would appear but the information is still here at least.)

After sorting and reading through a lot of great feedback from the Dancer community, these are the issues I feel should be the first to look at and take into consideration for change. The list is in order of importance with number 1 being the issue of greatest concern among the dancers. After each problem I have also included at least one possibility or alternative to what is currently in place with the exception of number 1 and 5.

1. There is a major lack of flourishes and variation in the dances. I realize the work involved in improving this situation would be great, but as things stand the lack of depth in the dances is of great concern to the community.

-The biggest of these complaints is having only three of four flourishes per dance with little exception. This is just not acceptable in the long run for this profession, it gives the dancers very little artistic flexibility and the same three of four flourishes gets boring to watch.

-Another problem is that the generic flourishes, 5-8, more often then not do not fit the dance style they are associated with. This in most cases makes those flourishes unusable simply because combining them with the dance looks ridiculous at best.

-The falling animation for Poplock needs to be changed badly. Doing a formal flourish in the middle of a Poplock dance makes absolutely no sense at all.

2. Action cost for dancing is way too high. As it is right now a Master Dancer can only dance for a few minutes before having to sit and rest again. This is completely out of sync with reality and is not acceptable in the least.

*Ideas to fix this problem.

a.) As things are currently the more skilled the dancer is the faster they run out of action. A real dancers stamina and ability to dance longer improves as they practice and condition their bodies. If anything the action cost should go down instead of up and at Master should be very small so they can dance for much longer periods of time.

b.) Make one of our otherwise less useful branches in the dancing tree affect this or give some sort of bonus to your action pool.

3. The techniques branch and the "special effects" within are hardly worth using. They give no benefit to the dancer outside of a very quick piece of eye candy at a high cost to the dancer. Its not that we don't like having something flashy because we do, but the cost is just too high right now.

-The main issue here is cost vs reward. The effect gives no experience bonus, no special benefit to healing and is extremely short in duration and yet it costs a great deal of action to use. When you combine this with the already excessive cost of dancing and flourishing its just not worth using them.

*Ideas to fix this problem.

a.) Remove the action cost all together for using the effects or take the cost out of the mind pool instead.

b.) Greatly increase the duration of each effect.

c.) Include some kind of experience bonus for using these effects. This fix should only be considered up until Master level where one of the other two ideas needs to be in place instead.

4. Base dancing experience on the level of knowledge the dancer has, not on the dance they are performing. This is a very frustrating issue for almost every dancer that has not yet become a master or does not plan on mastering the profession. The problem here is when you want to do a dance that matches the type of music being played, but in order to do that you would have to give up a large amount of experience.

*Idea to fix this problem.

a.) As things currently are I can see why this would of been considered a problem. Under the system

as it is now this would encourage dancers to all dance the lowest possible dance so the action cost would be as small as possible. The answer to this is simple tho, if you make the changes outlined in problem number 2, this would no longer be an issue.

5. A couple of small inconsistencies/ bugs.

-Decrease the rate of falling, it is much higher then it should be and the fact that a Master Dancer or any dancer for that matter falls as much as they do makes no sense. No real dancer falls that much, this needs to be seriously looked at.

-Fix the buggy look of Formal and Lyrical when others watch you, apparently some people but I don't believe everyone, is having a problem where these dances seem to glide and not move as intended or as the dancer see's.

*Idea to fix these problems.

Yes I realize that technically these are two separate issues, but both are rather small and as far as an idea to fix I think they both speak for themselves.

Thank you very much for your consideration on the problems we see with our profession. Your feedback is greatly anticipated and I look forward to hearing what you think about these issues. If I can be of any further service or if you have any questions at all please don't hesitate to let me know.

Best Regards,

Ravenmist - Dancer Correspondent

There are many other very important issues and changes I would love to see included but right now I'm trying to hit the ones that seem to beof the greatest importance to the community and the well being of the profession. Thanks again to all of you who posted your concerns, your help is greatly appreciated.