Dancer Archive

I am a master TK and master CH. This path involved many deaths and many trips to the cantina, and so here is my thought on AFK entertainers.

I would much rather watch an active entertainer than an AFK one. And those AFK entertainers who simulate activity with their prerecorded speach ticks me off to no end. (I am talking about the one in AH on Bloodfin, by the way.) The entertainers who are working to go up in skill will get my attention everytime, even if it makes me sit there a little longer because they are merely a novice entertainer while the AFK macro-artist is an Enthraller.

However, I would much rather watch an AFK entertainer than no entertainer at all. I get mental wounds and battle fatigue all the time. Now that I have reached Master TK, I only have to worry about the BF, but no matter how well I am doing, that will continue to build up. When I was going up my proffesion trees, I was usually on some sparsely populated planetfighting things that were either a match, or more than a match for me, and so I racked up that battle fatigue and mental wounds pretty quickly. Unfortunately, since there was no one there, that meant no entertainers, which meant that I would have had to pay 2-4k credits to go to a more popular world to find a cantina. This was always a pain for me, and so by the time I did go in, I would have 500+ battle fatigue and plenty of mental wounds.

I think that most people would rather watch an active entertainer rather than help some person grind through the tree with no work on their part, but it is not always an option for us. If you are an AFK macro-artist, it would just be polite to the people who have to work for their levels for you to just go AFK on some far, lonely outpost. You still get your slow and easy experience, and a little boon for you if there is some one hunting in that area. It will make things easier for that person as well. Don't expect any tips though, because we are giving you more xp than you deserve, so take it like that. Also if a person is working their medic skills, ANY entertainer is a help, AFK or otherwise. If you active entertainers don't like them being out in the middle of no where hogging all the xp there, then go steal their patrons from them. Problem is, most active dancers will not got out to the middle of no where because for the most part, there is no one there for the majority of the time, and so they would get better xp in a more populated cantina. Simple solution, no?

Another possible solution would be for SOE to have the cantina check for anyone AFK inside. If there is some one AFK, display a warning box on their screen stating that because they are AFK they will be booted in 5 minutes. If they do not come back from AFK, eject the player outside of the cantina, which makes that person stop dancing and RUN outside, where they can dance all they want if their macro is set like that, though since they are not inside, no mental or battle fatigue healing will come of it, andso no one will sit out there and waste their time with them.

If anyone else has any other suggestions to this problem, voice your opinions. Perhaps we can come up with something that would be good for everyone? Of course that depends if SOE even cares enough to listen to our suggestions.......

Hi,

Tough it out. If you are on isolated planet with only one AFKer, use him/her. If you can enough money to go back, you may return to them. However, if you don't, there is no harm in using AFKing person who will do no harm to you.

If you hate the automated comments, you can put him/her on ignore list. That was what it was meant for. USE IT.

Embedding codes into codes already implemented is a very difficult feat. It does not make sense to ask a solution to a problem which is already solved (IGNORE LIST) or is unnecessary (MAROONED ON ISOLATED PLANET WITH AFKER). Besides, the additional routines will not suit every needs so we end up with more whining.

Oh and I know about wounds/BF and mind healing. After all, I am a Blade Master and a Master Dancer. I know very well of hardship. (500+ BF? I hope you cloned, because you can get 500+ BF by 5-DB without cloning.) However, you have "CHOSEN" your own profession. You could have changedyour profession to something else whenever you wanted.... Personally, I enjoyed the difficulties associated with Fencer and Dancer. And after all that, I feel very proud to be a master of them both.

Qui'lu of Chilastra

Wow. Sorry if I offended you, seeing as your response seemed rather hostile. I did say I would use an AFK dancer if there was no active dancer around. I have no problem with that. I was just stating my opinion as a non-entertainer on how I feel on the subject. And yes, I do clone, and since I pull correctly, I rarely die. But being out in the field for hours and hours on end will build the battle fatigue up. I was simply stating that battle fatigue always builds, good or bad, and so we will always need entertainers for that purpose. As to the cantina idea, it was simply that, an idea. If it is too difficult to implement, or there is no need to implement it, then I am not going to go out of my way protesting and gathering signatures to get in implemented anyways. Its not my problem to begin with, just stating a SUGGESTION. And the thing I don't like about the AFK simulated conversation was because it always just seemed to me that this person was trying to give the idea of not being away from keyboard, which is how it would seem to some one who just walked into the cantina, and so deceitful, and so I as a patron of the cantina, would prefer not to have to see that. Again, just stating my opinion on the matters. I am glad you enjoy your profesions. I enjoy mine immensely as well, which is why I do not plan on changing them anytime soon. I just decided to check this board out on behalf of a friend who chose to be a dancer, and I was looking to check on the state of the profesion when I thought of something to talk about/suggest, which I am sorry did not go over well for you.

EternalMachi,

Dont apologize, we completely understand where you are coming from as a Dancer i have to deal with this on a regular basis. So i know where you are coming from.

If you come up with more ideas please feel free to post them and don't let some people scare you off. All of us want whats best for the game and for the players.

Btw if you are on Bloodfin look me up sometime :0)

Ceta

Master dancer

Bloodfin

AFK Macroing is to entertaining what ninja-looting and killstealing is to combat classes. As a class outsider, everything looks fine. As a dancer for example, I couldn't care less what happens to you outside the cantina. If I have the choice if I heal the killstealer or the nice player, I will heal the nice player. If only one comes in, I will heal that one. Still, killstealing or ninja looting is bad and so is AFK-macroing.

while( isAFK() ) Beat( horse.Corpse );

we gotta get rid of afk dancing! it's the most horrible abomination in the game! it annihilated my profession. the fun/tips/'thx hon' i give out are miniscule when there is an afker present!! fix it now soe!! don't just kick them from the cantina, eviscerate them irl!!

Meeuki, how many times have we told you to lay off the caffeine in the morning?

- J

*grin*

**edit** does it matter, all ents are for is restore mind wounds, the faster the better. non afkers are only good for buffs anyway tho :\

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TGB_Bane wrote:
**edit** does it matter, all ents are for is restore mind wounds, the faster the better. non afkers are only good for buffs anyway tho :\

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All I can say is wow.

I lived under power lines as a child too, but somehow I managed not to end up this anti-social.

- J

this guy tips nickles.

Back again. Glad to see that the friendly people have outnumbered the not so friendly, heheh. ^_~' When I was hunting I was usually staying in one area until the creatures there were not worth the time to fight before I moved on. This meant that I frequented the same cantina over and over and over again, and so I would usually see the same people each time. When someone posted that they could care less what happens to a person outside the cantina, I just thought about how glad I was that the entertainers I knew were not like that. Everytime I walked in there would be some playful comment about me being back again, or back so soon, and small talk about how the day was going for everyone and such. Back then the cantina's were much busier than they seem to be now. There are two dancers from back in the day that I remember particularly well. The first was Groupette, the Mon Cal dancer that I never watched because she was ALWAYS on and mostly on AFK, and Dixi Darlyn who I do not think I ever saw AFK, and she was always such a sweetie. ^_~ Oh, and there was a male wookie dancer in Mos Entha but for the life of me I cannot remember his name. The latter two always stuck out in my mind because they were friendly and talkative and did not have a five minute memory. They remember when a person has been there before, they remember what that person said they were doing or planning, and they ask how their adventures have progressed. These people made dedicated patrons by interacting with them, and so if I walked into a cantina with a dozen odd dancers, there were always one or two whom I would attend and tip (and tip well, I hope). But as I said, the cantina's are not as full as they once were, except for on Theed, that is, which usually holds groups of AFK dancers as well. I guess ifa dancer really wants to make it, they need to be in a large PA and know about big hunts and such, then when the hunt is over they can all group in their player cantina and a dozen or so people will be watching the SAME person to heal up after the deaths and incaps after, say, a krayt hunt.

Now I am just wondering if the player cantinas will be a boon or a bane for dancers. If a PA has enough money to place a cantina, then there is chance that that PA is big/busy enough to have people in the cantina often enough. But with more cantinas, that just means dancers will be more spread out and so players looking for heals will either not be able to find an entertainer when they need on, or always just go to Theed or Bestine because they know that there are ALWAYS dancers there. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and hopefully it will have a better impact on your profesion than the death and decay patch did.

Verdilak D'nai

MCH & MTK

Sons of Sith

Chessak, you continue to make the same eloquent post about how bat AFK macros are for the game when they're on adventure planets.

Yet when I'm on the adventure planets, I notice two things:

1. There are no AFK bots in the cantinas when I'm there.


2. There are no ATK entertainers (besides me)in the cantinas when I'm there.

Granted, I'm not on those worlds 24x7. But I am there about every other day for at least a few hours during primetime.

So for all their eloquence, your theories don't add up. At least not in my experience.

And the bestsolution remains the same. If you want live entertainers to be in those places, live entertainers have to go to those places.

I suppose the other alternative would be for SOE to reliably detect an AFK state and boot the character after some pre-determined amount of time AFK. Yet there are two problems with that approach (if your theories were correct) :

1. This will mean there are no entertainers on adventure worlds now. The predisposition against risk taking that most entertainers seem to share equates to significant hassle for adventurers.


2. This is technology that is fairly simple to defeat, as has been evidenced in every MMOG to date.