Dancer Archive
Thread: I just don't get you all
I just don't understand your class and how it seems to be played from my perspective.
I play a master combat medic and I enjoy it a lot. I have support roll to play ina group and I'm ok with that. So do many others in the group. Rangers area track and camp, docs buff, heal and rez, ch's provide tanks, and commandos firepower.
I'm lucky enough to play with a large group (30-60 people) once a week. We go after the biggest mobs we can find and it's a lot of fun. Something I've noticed is we never have a master entertainer come out despite that the hunt is well advertised and all are welcome to join. What usually happens is we fight some huge monster and lots of folks get dead, posioned or diseased and after we make camp to heal up. The medics run around healing wounds, others drag the dead to camp for docs to rez and everyone generally regroups and gets ready for the next mob. What also happens is some combat class with novice starts dancing.
Do all you know how badly needed your skillsare neededin that situation? I don't know how entertainer xp works but there are usually lots of wounds out there. And with the much deserved buffs you all got you would be even more appriciated. All night long I get tells of thanks and glad you arehere. I also get 10-20 tips every trip. You all could be getting the same. How would you feel to start dancing and have people start to /cheer and how would it feel to hear 3 or 4 shouts of "tip your healers" (not coming from the macro next to you, hehe) every time you start to heal?
I read lots of you who say you go out and adventure. I just wish it were more. So if your board come on out. Especially if your on Tempest and have nothing to do on Sunday afternoon 
Voss, MCM
The difference between being a Combat Medic or Doctor and being an Entertainer: Medics can heal on the field, entertainers get to stand around and watch.
That's why my entertainer is a Novice Medic also, so on the rare occassion that someone thinks to ask me along on their adventures, I have something to do while I'm waiting for people to get mind wounds. But I've had many unsuccessful trips where I just stood around the hunting grounds waiting and hoping that somone might set up a camp so that I would have something to do.
There are plenty of Entertainers who LOVE to be taken on adventures, just ASK or even better Offer some credits and make it a paid gig for us. I know it can be a lot of fun, just understand that unless the people who can actually PARTICIPATE in combat make an effort to keep things interested for those who cant...we aren't very likely to volunteer.
Here's a tip for you tho: If you see an entertainer performing on an "adventure" planet, do yourself a favor and invite them to come with you on your hunting trip (assuming you or someone with you can make camps) because they're likely to be their looking for a change of scenery (cantina's get OLD) and will GLADLY go with you.
Well...
My favorite char ( Miztress) plays on Tempest as well. She is Master Dancer and TK Master. Trust me...she is out adventuring, questing, killing, collecting, etc FAR more than she cantina dances. Matter of fact, I sometimes go for many days at a time without seeing the inside of a cantina unless it is on Dath, Lok, or Endor for just a few mins to heal up and buff my party between missions or quests, and I always do a /shout that a master dancer will be in the cantina for the next 15 mins...come and get mind candy if you need it.
I think I see the problem here, and perhaps there needs to be a major change in some things in order to correct something that I really don't think was meant to be in the game.
Obviously the devs wanted entertainers to participate in adventures and hunts, or they would not have given them the ability to heal mind wounds in camps, right? Well the problem lies in the fact that even if you have an entertainer with you, you still cannot get bf healed in camp and HAVE to go to a cantina for that. I know the subject has been tossed around about healing bf in camps...and there has been some chatter about it making entertainers too "powerful" (that really cracks me up) , and many entertainers are even very much against this happening as they fear it will keep folks out of the cantinas. Well, obviously its NOT going to deter folks from the cantinas much IF entertainers simply plant their behinds in the cantinas and refuse to go on hunts...lol.
I really don't know what the solution is, but we seem to have a HUGE gap here in what the class ACTUALLY does and what the class was DESIGNED to do, but there needs to be some incentive or optional skills available to entertainers to encourage them to get out more. Obviously groups want us...they literally BEG me to come out after they find out that I actually do that sort of thing.
Another comment that was made on this thread was that one reason entertainers don't go on hunts more isbecause they have to stand back out of the action and be bored until downtime. Ummm....last I checked everyone has 250 skill points to spend and even an Elite Master Dancer or Master Musician has MORE than enough points left over to master combat skills with several left over 
This particular char on Tempest is Master Dancer, Master TK, has scouting skills of exploration 4, survival 3, and novice medic skills high enough to use crappy stimC or really good stim B. If they stay out of the frey it is by their choice, for if they want to have good combat skills they certainly have enough points to do so. Now, if they want to master dance, music, id, and dabble in tailoring or cooking..well no...hehe.
I guess what I am saying is .. the classes are VERY customized...that is great and one very strong point of the game. But seems that most all entertainers want to do ONE thing...and that is cantina dance, and this leaves a HUGE gap out on the playing field for folks who REALLY DO want us out there.
Raven...give them something to ponder about this. Those of us who are multi-taskers are really left out in the cold, and soooo many other players are as well, because they simply aren't getting the services that the entertainers have to offer and they REALLY DO WANT US.
The people who don't tip are most often found in those hunting groups and the people who do pay for our services can be found at our cantinas or in some of the public cantinas. So we go where the pay check is.
I'm in agreement with Taboux on alot of that post.
I get this feeling that there is a sizable subset of the dance community that identifies themselves solely as dancers and don't feel that they have much to offer a group. I agree that if you don't have some basic combat or medic skills you might feel like baggage in a hunting group. That andthe fact that dancer abilities are not a immediatefactor during combat isprobably why dancers on the whole don't join group hunts.
I'm a dancer, squad leader, and carbineer at the moment - I consider myself a field entertainer. I wear dancer titles because it's my most advanced profession, so I don't think alot of peopleevenconsider the possibility I can add some damage to a hunting group. There are some of out there, we're just hard to find sometimes.
The best way to enjoy the benefits of an entertainer in the field is to just ask if a dancer wants to come along.
1. Lots and lots of people who play entertainers are roleplayers. Now, before I get flamed I know it is not ALL of them... but a lot of them are. A much higher percentage of entertainers I have met in-game are roleplayers than any other class. Normally, as a roleplayer, I do not associate huge 30-person Endorian hunts with a huge amount of RP opportunity. Now, maybe I'd be wrong and maybe your group RPs a lot, but my general experience with such things is that it is not generally the case. I like hunting too, from time to time (my main character is a master marksman in addition to closing in on master dancer) -- but I'm not about to spend several hours doing combat and little or no RP. So the first question I would have if such a group invited me would be, "are you guys all RPers, and are you going to RP along the way?" and if the answer was (as it generally is in such cases), "Sorry, no." then my answer to them would, also, be "Sorry, no." I'm not saying THEY should have to roleplay if they don't want to -- far from it. But *I* am not about to NOT roleplay, when I do want to.
2. Many dancers are Socializers on the bartle scale... the vast majority list it as their #1 "thing" to do on the game. Even if they are not roleplaying in character, not much "socializing" tends to happen on hunts, certainly not in comparison with the kind that goes in an a cantina. So if they are here to have a pretty, nice, graphical chat room with cute animations, then you will not be recruiting them to go hunting.
3. Treatment by the big-hunt combat-boyz of the typical entertainers has, on many servers, in many cases, been less than exemplary. Entertainers are often treated like trash, not tipped for their services, and "molested" with obnoxious emotes like /lick. After receiving such treatment from the very people who are likely to go on huge hunts like this, you may understand why they might not wish to go along with them.
4. Generally, in my experience, we are not asked. I walk around with my Choreographer title up, NOT my Master Marksman title. Why? Because I tend to hang out in the parts of Naboo where the cantina is often not manned (Keren, Kaadara) on my server, and I want people to be able to find me with a search and ask for healing if they need it. I'll happily come back from a survey/sampling trip to heal someone in the cantina... but I am not going to just sit there staring at the room with nothing happening for 2 hours waiting for someone to show up. Well, you want to know how often people ask a Choreographer to go on a hunt with them... Let's see, hmm... let me whip out my calculator and add up all the times my dancer has been invited on a hunt... working... working... Ah, here's the answer: ZERO. I've not even been asked, "Hey, do you hvae any other skills that might be useful on a hunt?" Nobody asks. And so far, I have not seen anyone standing around the cantina or shuttle port outside Keren offering to take anyone they want along for a hunt. So you're kind of asking, "Why haven't you done this thing that you've never once had an opportunity to do?" You may as well ask me why I've never hopped a rocket to the moon. If NASA asked me I'd go... but I don't think I've got any invitations to the moon forthcoming any time soon...
Well, there are some reasons for ya. I have been on a couple of hunts with friends... but we were all mainly entertainers with some minor combat abilities (and one doctor with some minor combat abilities) and we just felt like going out and doing a big hunt, and we all went together because no one had ever asked any of us to go along on a regular hunt in the first place. That's the only "large" hunt I have ever been on, and it was a total of 5 people.
Usually, I just go out with 2 friends -- both also entertainers by the way -- and hunt small stuff. When I want to tackle big stuff, the 2 friends and I log into a different server with our Fencer, Swordsman, and Carbineer characters who have lots of combat ability, and use them instead.
C
Lunah75 wrote:
I am having fun and that is all that matters.
I nominate Lunah for a badge for those 10 words.
Thanks everyone for the replys. I think I understand you a bit better now.
Taboux, I have run into Miztress on Dath once before. I was thrilled to have my few wounds healed by a Master out there soI tippped 5k and you gave me a buff after 
Hope to see you out putting the smack down to a Ranor again soon.
Densia, we would love to have you out with us but the hunt usually does not start till 9pm NY time so that obviously doesen't work for you 
To those who say you would just be waiting around during a battle with nothing to do, well, your right. But so do I quite a bit. My little pistol skill don't do much in a big group. I don't start doing much until the really big mobs start stomping people into the group, thats when I get my fun . Same for docs, we both frequently run around empty handed, but we are support types out there so its ok by me.
I think that many of you would find getting novice marksmen and heading out with a group you may find combat is enjoyable. You don't have to be an uber pure combat class to participate. And not to mention that you will be able to go out and explore parts of the game that you would never be able to see solo, thats half the reason I go out in the big groups. I guess what I'm saying is you don't have to wait around to heal to have fun, no one will mock you for brandishing a cdef with a menacing facial expression.
The other thing I read in the replys here is folks saying I'd love to go but never had the chance, I'll try to correct that on my end. I'll visit the Theed cantina tonight and see about recruiting a few entainers for the trip Sunday.
Thanks for your thoughts
Voss, MCM
I'm in Europe and I tend to play until the early hours on sunday morning so I sleep till around 2pm my local time, which is early in the morning for most people.
I'm not fond of tip beggars, none of the Tempest entertainers I got to know like tip beggars (or afk bots for that matter), we just want to enjoy our profession.
I guess the real problem is that you guys go hunting when it's too late here for me to come along. For example, 4pm NY time is 10pm for me. But feel free to call me next time you go hunting, just remember that the only fighting I do is hit rough customers over the head with my mandoviol.
He immediately paid the fare (and the return trip, Goddess bless him), and off I went to Dathomir. I had several people who were absolutely THRILLED to see me and tipped handsomely. I did a 3 hour stint there. I was, however, very annoyed to find out that the 'register location' feature did not work there.
How about we bug the devs to get some of those unregisterable places fixed? These are places that are starving for entertainers, and if we can't let them know when we're there, they'll never look for us there.