Dancer Archive
Thread: Dancer Issues 7-25-03 FINAL (in case anyone wants to view for reference)
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. (Great improvement in this area seems to be already coming our way, thank you and I hope this continues to say the least! The following is a rundown of further changes that may or may not be needed depending on the update.)
-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. (Note: It would seem that the dev team is already making great progress in this area according to the update notes released by Q. This is great news indeed but would still like to see improvement on Exotic dance and Formal. Need more variation between exotic 1,2 and 3,4)
-Another problem is that the generic flourishes, 5-8 more often then not, don't 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. (Note: With the addition of more flourishes in the upcoming update, I'm not sure if any of the other dances will be affected and if so, how good they will look. I can say if no change has been made to Exotic for example, this will still be a concern.)
-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. (Note: I am guessing that with the addition of the new flourishes for Poplock this animation has been fixed too, if so please ignore this part. )
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.
c.) Make action cost based on dancer level not the dance itself, going down as the dancer goes up so action cost is very low at Master. (More of an add on for a.) then another idea here.)
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. It's 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 it's 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 have 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
Master Dancer STILL falls on Exotic2 and 3 even though these are lower level dances.
The two healing branches are of absolutely NO value to the Dancer. They ONLY benefit the customer resulting in the customer leaving the cantina sooner. No better tips result from the faster healing. NOTHING of benefit to the dancer.
Oh...and Exotic4 only had TWO unique flourishes...not even 3....blah.
Can we hope the added flourishes for Lyrical also are for Lyrical2?
I could be wrong but I'd be surprised.
That's completely subjective. I have gotten tipped better often for the fact that i heal quickly. There may be justifiable reasons for changes to those branches, but not getting tipped isn't one of them.
I think what I was pointing out...and have been way back into beta...is that there is NO benefit in those two branches to the Dancer. That's HALF an adavanced skill tree that does not benifit, direclty or indirectly, the player that has earned it. Sure seems to be a problem to me...
I have a couple real problems with "formal" dance, the one gained with dancing 4 on the entertainer tree.
It makes me dizzy in rl to do, to be frank. My character even looks like she's getting dizzy doing it, actually. She spins one way, trips over her foot (it looks like), spins the other way, This repeats a bit, and then she'll pause, shake her head back and forth as though disoriented, and repeat. (Straight dance with no flourishes, that is).
The dance also roams ALL over the cantina in seemingly no pattern what so ever. Formal dancing, in my experience, is very patterned. It should be one of the easiest dances to dance in "an area" on, and plan out your flourishes to "land" where you want them.
I'm not good at figuring out what flourishes don't work with what dances, but it seems most of the ones for "formal" arent very formal.
I'd like to have at least one dance that doesn't make me look like an erotic dancer, and I'd hoped "formal" would be it. I was disappointed when I saw it, though, because I could not do it for long without feeling like I was going to be sick. 
Good list, Ravenmist, with great suggestions for fixing things. I don't know what else you have to do during your month, but well done.
This was one of the better Profession Correspondant reports I have seen.
I don't know if it has been mentioned but perhaps with Dancing and Musician mastery should also come the ability to heal BF in camps. I don't think it's wise to petition for this ability at lower skill levels (as the soldier/casual slitherhorn player would render us useless), but the master dancer and master entertainer I think should be skilled enough to soothe the most battle weary individuals- cantina or no cantina. Reserving this ability for the masters gives us all something to look forward to as well as preventing the ordinary citizen who takes a few slitherhorn classes from making us obsolete.
Just tossing out a suggestion, I'd love to hear what ya guys think about it.
Its been brought up several times so far but its lower on the priority list from what I've seen. Theres a lot of bigger issues myself and most dancers would rather be fixed or changed first I think. And since I can only submit so much so often, I need to be careful what I send in first and try to really get the things that matter to everyone. I know I won't please everyone but hopefully most of you will think I'm doing a decent job.
I do think that Masters need something more to make them stand out, just not sure thats the answer yet. The devs did what they did very much on purpose to force people into the Cantina's.. I sort of doubt they'd be willing to change that, even for Masters. <shrug> Either way it will be addressed once some bigger issues are out of the way.
No worries, I agree BF isssues are much lower in the food-chain compared to the major ones outlined above
Keep up the good work 
First of all Ravenmist thank you for your work. Great job!
I think more flourishes give us more things to work with and will add depth to choreography and dances in a way that musical flourishes do for musicians.
I especially like mention of lowering the falling percentage, fixing basic steps, filling out dance lines and perhaps enhancing techniques, although I'd like to see it more of a dance experimentation that could be used to develop new steps by combining elements of the programmed ones.
I respectfullydisagree that there is a problem with having the two healing lines in the dancer's tree. I definitely get tipped for healing and while roleplayers might come in just to watch and talk and chat, a large portion of the game players do not consider themselves so and only come in to heal. After that its our job to make them stay awhile but it is the only thing that makes the dancer an integrated part of the character classes as a whole. It benefits me by bringing in more people to associate with and entertain. It benefits me by healing my own damage. It might be nice to have a tree completely dedicated to the artistic aspects of dance but the game is founded on a cinematic struggle of good vs evil and plays out in an imperial vs rebel conflict. If they can tie in all the professions to that I can see a design decision play there, and I can accept it.
Eventually I'd like to see more customization options in all skill trees that might enhance dance performance but I don't have an issue with the healing lines, I thought it was a clever solution to guarantee support of a non-combat class of skills.
The two healing branches are of absolutely NO value to the Dancer. They ONLY benefit the customer resulting in the customer leaving the cantina sooner. No better tips result from the faster healing. NOTHING of benefit to the dancer.
Spinningcloud, from a game design standpoint I'm going to disagree with you here.
Entertainment Heal xp is really our only reason for being in the game. If our dances had no other affect, why would there be any incentive for players to come sit in a cantina instead of throwing up a camp and going AFK?
The object is to promote group interdependence, and from that standpoint the Entertainment Healing requirements on our profession ensure that we are dancing in public (ie, with an audience) instead of standing in the living room of our house and starting up a macro. We only get Entertainment Heal xp when someone is watching us -- and they only /watch us when they need to dump their BF. There is the symbiosis between entertainer and fighter.
By making Ent.Heal a co-requirement for Mastery, the game places an obligation on us to do what SWG wants us to do - interact, socialize, and group. It's a better game that way.