Dancer Archive

Chessack is quite right, the afk performer are becoming an epidemic. But it is not that funny anymore. Although the buff gave us something we actually could "sell" it increased the afk performers. No that the jedi and holocron boom has seized with swg (and it seems that every future jedi needs to do one entertainer master at least) it's getting worse.

Just disable the "/afktime off" and make the engine give no xp if the performer is away from the keyboard. so they need to hit at least every 5 minutes the keyboard/mouse. talk to the DEV, let them fix it quick. the afk performers are ruining our reputation and it's an insult to every master performer who never was afk while performing (I can see people doing a master performer in one week or less).

I heard from more than one player: "Why tipping entertainer if they are all afk". It's not about the tipping, it'S about what the people think of us.

thanks for your attention and please do something....

::nods:: Just waiting at this point to see what the devs are willing/want to do.

I have a terrible confession to make: I am an AFK macrotainer.

Heh.

The problem is more complex then that people. When a macro is sent to to the system the performer is not afk to the system. They are acualy just being "curtious" by turning the tag on. This is why the macro samplers got the "random" event deal adn thsi is the only way to deal with macro entertaienrs. This will cause use to do a few extra mouse clicks and the DEV's have to make a failure to respond to the box kick the entertainer intot he back ally then /dump so they are off the floor and not spamming. No other methode will work because a macro is sendign comands to the system thus they are not afk.

Yeah, that pop-up worked so famously against the macro samplers. I'm sure whatever the devs might waste their time constructing would be just that - a waste.

Again I implore you to instead petition the devs to create BONUSES for entertainers that CAN'T BE USED AFK instead of wasting their time coding anti-macro logic that will be defeated in a few hours or days time.

Here is a break down of how it could work for those of you that ahvn't seen the afk sampler fix.

Every 10-15 min a box would pop up with somthign like

***********************************************

Your fans scream for <song/dance/effect>

Give them what they want

Keep doing your thang

<ok>

***********************************************

You highlight a choice and click ok. There would be a timmer say 3min (long enough to answer the box without having to rush) if you dont answer in the aloted time you are telported to the back ally (better yet add a event of the bouncers escorting you out) and forced a /dump command (dumping all your macros curently running) and left there.

Two flaws in this methode are:

1. we as entertaienrs have to make SURE we service little traveled cantina's so the "I'm doing a public service argument wont hold water" I sugest a sticky thread on every server for entertaienr requests or better yet take the broken mission system and tie it to in game "requests" for entertaienrs add a "agent" npc to request entertaienrs through.

2. The afk samplers can still get by with it by puting a /sit then a pause then a /stand in their macro it slows their progress but seems to get aroudn the message box

<giggle> Ok sometimes I just can't shut up. The only real solution to this and many other cantina problems is simply this. Special CSR's would monitor cantinas (we all have to go there eventualy for one reason or another) Sony would have to make policy CLEAR on both AFK and spaming. A single CSR could monitor multiple cantians and deal directly with violators. If this seems like a job no one would do I live in San Diego and I'll take the job.

You won't get rid of AFK entertainers until there is some enjoyable content worthy of being there to get. As it stands right now we fill a need for combat players (healing BF) so a character doing what we do is needed.. However there is no real FUNreason to be at the screen watching as it happens because we get no reward for our time investment (unless we happen across one of the few generous player characters that actually remembers to pay for the healing).

<giggle> Ok sometimes I just can't shut up. The only real solution to this and many other cantina problems is simply this. Special CSR's would monitor cantinas (we all have to go there eventualy for one reason or another) Sony would have to make policy CLEAR on both AFK and spaming. A single CSR could monitor multiple cantians and deal directly with violators. If this seems like a job no one would do I live in San Diego and I'll take the job

<giggle> the policy is clear sweety. read up on your posts, SOE has officially said AFK macroing with ingame tools is ok. the surveying issue is not an arguement either

it.... i

and if they can't get a CSR to stop 4 people from calling someone a **edit** till they log out of the game, what in the hell makes you think they could get 1 person to stop people spamming text?

**edit** why don't you people realize the source of the problem needs to be solved. why do people afk macro???? do get to MASTER DANCER!!! **edit** no! 80% don't give a **edit** about that! they do it cause the holocron told them to. or because it's an anti-idle... or they think they'll get money from it (and they do).. or they do it because they realize at 4-freaking-am nobody will be in there and some poor sap might want to be healed... or they do it cause the cantinas are a boring waste of time.... or... or...or....or....

solve the problem your way, and create five more.

freaking forum.... posted before i wanted it to.

anyway, why do you think the developers have pussyfooted around this issue? they say "ahhhwe know its an issue but ahhhh we'll try to make the game more fun so there are incentives not to afk macro! ahhh"

lemme give you guys a english lesson. that means "shut the hell up tools! we designed the game that way for a freaking reason! we'll toss you a bone but it wont be the elimination of afk macroing!!!"

they put the tools provided into the game for a specific reason. and that reason is so that you could macro certain skills essential to the culture of the game, unattended. what, you think they just f'ed up and put /uiactiontoolbarSlotxx in the game without considering what it could do? @#%@!@ !

if you want the developers to empower us then ask for a way to remove unattended buffing. give our class a useful purpose besides "roleplaying" and healing morons who don't have 1k to clone. ask for more powerful buffs. longer lasting buffs. group buff bonuses so people are encouraged to preform in groups and the many other ideas that i see on this thread. but afk being your #1 concern? please. way to screw us fora few more months.

it is actually a concern, because the way things are now is that our reputation is somewhere where it shouldnt be. I dont care if our buffs are more powerfull or not (that would add only more afk performers). The issue is that nearly every other profession needs an active player and we dont need that. And I want this to change. I freaking got every xp while i was active and that took me a month to go. Even if the DEVs told us that it is ok to use macros, Q3PO also said that we should not support afk entertainer.

Oh sure, the game engine provides the feature. The game engine provides many things, they didnt even fix the "play music get dance xp" exploit. And actually I made a different experience, that even if you are doing a macro, after a time you are afk, because the macro is what the game engine provides and not what the player does.

All I need to do to get a master dancer is to be online when the servers rebootet. I can change my stats so that I never need to pause, i can dance all day and night. And there I have a master dancer within a week. Why should i call this profession entertainer anymore? All i do is beeing logged in and dont care what entertaining really is. Is this really what SOE wants? What this game provides us? Oh well, if you think so, i dont, that's why I personally want a change and I'm not the only one. I dont want to let this profession to go to the dogs...

And atm it's nothing but a way to the force slot or a buff worth...

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meeuki wrote:

if you want the developers to empower us then ask for a way to remove unattended buffing. give our class a useful purpose besides "roleplaying" and healing morons who don't have 1k to clone. ask for more powerful buffs. longer lasting buffs. group buff bonuses so people are encouraged to preform in groups and the many other ideas that i see on this thread. but afk being your #1 concern? please. way to screw us fora few more months.

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Oh happy day! Another entertainer gets it!

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ErioTenjo wrote:

Chessack is quite right, the afk performer are becoming an epidemic. But it is not that funny anymore.

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You missed the point of the thread I posted. (That's OK, a few others apparently missed it too.) It wasn't just intended to be funny, although I hoped it would be that. It was intended to show you a way, through simple roleplaying, that we can try to be a solution to this problem at least until something else is done about it.

AFK Macroing is in the game for now. It's not going away any time soon, if it goes away at all. Not the least of which reason for this is, the developers have to make sure that by stopping unreasonable use of macros by dancers, they don't kill off the reasonable use of it for not only dancers but everyone else. I think there are a lot of good arguments to be made for NOT allowing endless "function calls" from any client in a game (lag, server load, potential loop-trapping, and other things I won't get into), from a pure coding perspective (I ran a MUSH for five years and I kept the loop-checking not only turned on but VERY draconian in its limitations for just these reasons, and it prevented server crashes at least a few times that I know of, and probably lots of times that I don't know of). But regardless of its negative effects on servers, "entertianer culture", or anything else, AFK Macroing is in the game for now, and any fixes or changes to it probably won't be coming along until at least the holiday season if not into next year.

So the question is, with nothing to be done about this in the immediate future, what do we, the live/active entertainers, do about this? There are several options, it seems to me. Up to now they have been:

1. Ignore it -- put the macro spammers on your /ignore, pretend you don't see them there, and go about your business as if they don't exist. PRO - easy to do (mechanically). /addignore is quick to type and then you just act as if they weren't there. CON - hard to do realistically. If you are in there roleplyaing, even if you ignore them, unavoidably, other players will come in and NOT ignore them, and now you have to do line-by-line mental editing/censoring of the roleplay you are involved in to try to "edit out" the macrotainer. Still not too hard if there is only one, but if there are 10 of them it gets to be near-impossible. Add to that, when players come in, if they are talked to directly, they tend to talk back (even if they are not roleplayers or socializers, they usually respond a little if you ask things like, "What got you?" when they have 80% black HAM bars, and if you can say, "Oh yeah, I got nailed by a Narglatch once too..." they will often strike up a conversation with you even if they are not really socializers per se). However, if they see the whole cantina being a bunch of mummies, this behavior "rubs off" on them too, often no matter what you do as a live performer. In the end the atmosphere of the cantina is ruined no matter what you try to do and how much of a "social butterfly" you try to be. So simply ignoring them, especially when they are present in large numbers, just doesn't work in the long run.
   
   
2. Go elsewhere - AFK Macro-tainers, it's known, are doing it for experience. That's the only real reason to do it. So they want big XP and that comes from big groups. So you could argue, leave the "big" venue and go somewhere smaller and more out of the way, which is not likely to attract AFK Macro-tainers. PROS - It neatly "avoids" the problem, getting you out of the unpleasant situation and into someplace nicer. Quick and easy fix. CONS - it doesn't always work. In fact often it doesn't. Even though they tend to like big groups, there are often AFK Macro-tainers in smaller venues as well. Sometimes there is not a single cantina on the entire planet of Naboo without AFK Macroers. Secondly, it's not fair to the live person, that she should have to leave a place that she might otherwise like, and go somewhere she might not like as well, just to find a place without these zombies. Beyond that, it is in some sense self-defeating. It is generally the socializers who don't like AFK Macroers, because you can't socialize with them and they kill socialization in a place in general (see the above point). But the bigger places are more likely to have socialization opportunities. So sure I could go to Endor, which is empty, and dance in "peace" away from AFK Macroers, BUT... I am also giving up the one thing that draws me to the profession at all: socialization and roleplay. It's hard to roleplay with an empty room. And if by some chance you do mange to get a nice group to slowly build up in your small place (as I did in Keren), then as it gets larger, and people start going there to get healed, and "word spreads," guess who also starts showing up? That's right, the AFK Macroers looking for big groups. Now you're back to square one. So going elsewhere not only doesn't always work, but in fact is often self-defeating, and is not a viable long-term solution either.
   
   
3. Give up dancing -- I know a bunch of Master Dancers (or Former Masters) who have done this. Give up. Get out of the cantinas entirely, since you can't get away from them and can't realistically completely ignore them (see points 1 and 2 above). Throw in the towel and admit defeat. Keep enough ent skills to self-heal, and just do that quickly when you need it and otherwise stay out of the performance areas. PROS - Automatically gets you away from the problem. CONS - major con here: you have to QUIT doing the thing you love. You have to pick up your 2nd or 3rd favorite profession and surrender your favorite because other people are making the game unpleasant. IMO, this is not an option at all, and certainly not a viable solution to the problem if you want to remain a dancer.
   

These are the three obvious, all equally unattractive, solutions to AFK Macro-taining bothering you. I tried 1 and 2 (but not 3), and as I say neither of them works long-term. After a friend and I left AFK-Keren and went to Kaadara, and found it also AFK-ville, and did some other things, I finally said, "I'm going back to Keren. I refuse to concede the field to those punks." So she accompanied me, and in group chat said, "It's so hard to RP with these guys here."

That's when I got the idea: RP about it. I normally don't do this, because AFK is an "out of character" state (it's the state of the player, not the character). But if they are going to be there and I am going to be forced (see #1 above) to deal with them whether I want to or not, then I decided to RP about it. And I decided, since they apparently don't care if what they do bothers me, then I will show them the same discourtesy they show me, and RP about them in the most unflattering way possible -- that they are drooling, zombie-like, spice-addicts.

While it was delivered with a bit of humor, my post was meant to provide this as a 4th alternative. As a community, the active dancers can just start roleplaying that there is a drug addiction epidemic going on in their community, and turn what is a negative into a positive. Because let me tell you, as we came up with the name ("Kreetlejuice") and what it stands for, and so on and so forth, both I and the other person, who had been pretty unhappy at the start, were laughing hysterically.

And if the AFKers don't like it, my feeling is I will show them the same respect they showed me, and tell them just what they told me: I spend $15/month, don't tell me how to play the game, and don't tell me how to roleplay. What's good for the goose, my friends, is good for the gander.

So, yes my post was humorous, but I was trying to make a point. Options 1-3 are unattractive. I will agree. But this is option 4. Instead of being miserable, turn it into a funny situation and have fun at their expense. If it bothers them, maybe they will either go away, or cut it out and start acting like a live performer instead. Either way, by YOU having fun, YOU win, since games are all about having fun.

Given the choices, I choose the Acid Fermented Kreetlejuice spice-addiction roleplay option. I've only done it for 1 evening now, so I am not sure where it leads, but I am convinced it will lead to a better place, than any of the other unattractive options out there.

C