Dancer Archive
Thread: CU Update: Blair on Ents
CU Question: Entertainers in the CU... Is the intent for entertainers to have an actual combat role?
Blair: Personally, I am not for this. I am of the belief that one of the gems of SWG is that we have social professions that have the ability to be successful without resorting to combat. There is no change to this philosophy from a CU point of view.
So, I know this looks kinda like a blow off answer... and it kinda is... but considering who it's from, it says a lot more than what it looks like. Blair is one of the few people still around from the very first days that knows and believes in the very first vision of Entertainers.
I personally think BF was going to go away and was under that impression until TH posted in Blair's thread and said that it wasn't. I know that Blair is a big fan of keeping BF and is in fact the only Dev I ever met as a Corr who was in favor of the whole BF concept. When I asked him about bumping up the cost and effect of BF at the Summit, he said no, BF was meant to be very slow attrition.
He also was the one to personally explain to the room of corrs and devs who were at the Summit that the Cantinas are the Entertainer's "reward" in combination with the BF system. Our reward is meant to be people needing to come in and spend time chatting with us.
I think it's really important that everyone in here who wants to give feedback on the Ent CU issues needs to try to grasp this sort of "original Ent concept" I'm telling you Blair has. He really did fill in a lot of holes in the concept for me, because I was not an SWG Beta tester. Those of you in here who were and were a witness to those early Ent design talks will most likely have some valuable insight for all of us. Maybe some of the other corrs who were there at the Summit might be able to add some insight as well.
Good news? Bad news? I don't know, but I think we're going back to original concept, kids. 
Message Edited by Panthu on 03-29-2005 12:02 AM
Message Edited by Drygo on 03-28-2005 09:28 PM
LyteFoot wrote:
This is fine Panthu but I thought buffs were put in the game to give us some way to make credits. Some people tip purely for entertaining but not many so what else do we have to "sell"?
Drygo wrote:
Maybe I took up the wrong profession. Maybe the devs vision of entertainers really is that we are nothing more than social players who really like the reward of having people come visit us. Eh...to tell you the truth, if that's all I wanted, I would still be playing The Sims Online.
***
Maybe during our revamp we are going to get so many great and wonderful tools at our disposal, that we will actually be able to make money because people want to come see us. Maybe it will somehow make us like tailors. Nobody really needs tailors that much, but tailors are wanted. People really like dressing up their characters. I don't know many people who are satisfied wearing the same thing every day. And, not just entertainers, but combat folk. Everybody wants clothes. If somehow the entertainer revamp makes it so that non-entertainers are just so incredibly wowed with the tools that we have that they willingly seek out performances and happily pay admission for performances...then, hey, that works for me. I just have my doubts the devs would be able to pull that off. But, if they somehow did, I'd be a very happy camper.
Ok, Keld who was the other Dev actually going back and forth with Blair for the majority of what we witnessed of Blair's Ent Vision at the Summit was in contrast, very Performance based. Keld really had some neat ideas about our Performance aspects, Blair seemed very stuck on the pure "non-combat, low effort, just chatting" aspect of Entertainers and never commented on enhanced performance at all that I was a witness to. Maybe RM might have some old insight there? Somebody else? I don't know, not me.
That always seemed to be Keld and art guy Jake's baby to me and I was never able to get other Devs to discuss it with me when I was a corr. This is something I personally would be interested in knowing if Blair is now willing to look into for us or if he feels like it isn't necessary.
Buffer, super healer guys was NEVER what we were in beta. Go back and read the first few months worth of posts in dancer forum and you'll get a sense of who and what entertainer WAS. Mainly, just a bunch of happy go lucky freaks that gathered around flirting, chatting and getting cool new dances to play with and impress each other with (not to mention goodies like items and clothes).
We were socializers and definately NOT gamers. Just a bunch of characters sitting around a cantina hoping we could get some new cooler dances and have some people maybe set us up with some credits. Hell, myself, I have always hoped that we could get some money from the NPC system somehow ala combat rather than have to be beggars from combat/crafter players that for the most part hate that we are already a time sink for them.
If I was to list what we put importance on it was...
1) Dances
2) People (chat to/flirt with)
3) goodies (wearables, houses, animals, props... bobbles!!!)
4) tips
Landlubber wrote:
If this statement comes from (what Panthu seems to assume) is our best hope and staunchest supporter from among the Devs,....
I didn't say he was our only supporter, I said he was the only one I ever met who loved the old original plan. *points up to Else's post*
Every Dev I ever met as a Corr liked Ents and had ideas about us and for us. Blair's were just pretty much exactly unchanged from concept unlike the other Devs I talked to. He didn't seem to think things needed to be added, he seemed to think we needed to just get back to what we had been... which Else seems to have described perfectly from my understanding.
Panthu wrote:
Our reward is meant to be people needing to come in and spend time chatting with us.
Unfortunately, those who don't want to come in and chat with us are forced to as well. I think this forced interaction has a great deal to do with many of the conditions of our professions that we don't like. If players don't want to deal with us, they'll find a way to obtain our services without us. If they have to deal with us and they feel like making someone pay the price for it..they're going to be taking it out on entertainers.
Whatever our future ends up being, I hope the following are considered:
Returning our place in the combat timeline to post-combat as it was prior to the increase in duration and percentage over base of our buffs.
If we providesome form of enhancement for combatters, I would like to see its creation in a form thatcannot be automated andprovides for those who don't want to deal with us (perhaps portable and/or can be sold to merchantsfor sell ontheir vendors or on the bazaar).
That we have activities that are fun and rewardingenough to compel people to stick around and play their characters ("Looking at what parts of your game players tend to automate is a good way to determine which parts of the game are tedious and/or not fun." - Raph Koster). The qualities of challenge, achievement and reward define gaming. Far too few are finding these qualities in the entertainer professions.
And it also makes me rather sad that amidst a time of great changes for this game. A time in which they are looking at changing things and making things better that they found out didn't work. Being flexible. It's an online game and we were supposed to be this great new thing. To sit there and write in stone from the start what we are and what we are supposed to be. And then to just not be able to change from that into something that works...
Hopefully the other Devs that see that MORE can be done with our professions to make them honestly amazing and something to be included into future games.... I honestly hope those Devs have enough pull, stats on what we want and casual/social/gamers that the Bean counters see it as being profitable... I just hope it can change.
