Dancer Archive
Thread: Entertainment droid ideas
<cross-posted to Dancer, Musician, and Entertainer forums>
Ravenmist, Tiaga, NewJedi,
As we are all aware, the developers are moving to improve the quantity and quality of droids in the game. There have been some great suggestions regarding these droids, some of which came from our communities.
It is my wish and dream that the correspondents from Dancer, Musician, and Entertainer forums band together and push that droids be allowed to heal Mind Wounds anywhere in the city. While this goes against the original intent of cantinas, I feel there are some compelling reasons to support this.
- Realism – A street performer can be quite entertaining. If a performer can ease the mind in the atmosphere of a cantina, he can also put people at ease at a street corner, in a park, or in a plaza if the atmosphere is right. These droids can provide that atmosphere.
- Encourage active play without punishing AFK – For good or for bad, AFK play will be around. Customer Service has indicated that AFK is a legitimate form of play while some of the Developers stated that they’d rather people play at the keyboard. The reason this encourages keyboard play is that these droids require batteries. If you go AFK in the street with a dead droid, then you are not healing anybody. This does not punish AFK performers because the active player must pay in order to provide this service in the street.
- Improved atmosphere – This idea spreads performers across the city, rather than keep them clustered in one area. In places like Theed, where 75 characters may be found overlapping each other, it becomes nearly impossible to conduct business if it involves selecting someone. While this idea will certainly not eliminate the visual clutter, it can help out a little bit.
For this plan to work, some concessions must be made. I will throw out some ideas that are relevant to this concept. Some aren’t that great, but they warrant investigation anyway.
- Encourage cantina use – The cantina is still the paragon of entertainment, and it is important to not devalue that aspect of the cantina. Since AFK is a valid form of play (per Customer Service), there must be some motivation to get people into these centers. Any of the following ideas may help keep the cantina a legitimate hotspot.
- Reduce the healing rate outside of the cantina.
- Do not heal Battle Fatigue outside of the cantina.
- Do not allow Mind, Willpower, Focus buffs outside of the cantina.
- Reduce experience gain outside of the cantina (possibly to zero).
- Discourage starport clutter – As written, if this policy goes into place, the starports will become even more cluttered than before. Contrary to the idea of performing anywhere in the city, there should be a zone (say within 75 meters) around the starports where droids cannot be set up. For story purposes, perhaps droids are not allowed there because of security risk.
- Discourage med center clutter – Sometimes the med center can be as cluttered as the starport, and allowing Entertainers to heal here will make things worse. Also, there is the possibility of exploit as a Medic heals his Mind Wounds as he treats damages. This may not be much of an issue as virtually all Medics use crafted items rather than straight Mind. A no-droid zone around med centers can alleviate this problem.
- Discourage clutter at any major building – This is difficult to define. Should Entertainers be prevented from performing at a bank? A crafting station? If attention is to be paid here, there would be a lot of coding and possibly some errors.
Please note that when I refer to a cantina, I also refer to theatres and hotels in order to avoid being too prolix in my writing. I do not mean to imply that a cantina is better than a hotel or a theatre.
I make this suggestion as a sort of compromise. Many Entertainers wish to perform for people, but they do not want to perform in some of the crowded cantinas. Likewise, it is important to provide a service without denying the AFKers access to experience. I hope to see this as a very possible avenue that can make both sides happy when the new droids are released. The true winner will be the Droid Engineer, who will receive another stream of income as Entertainers buy batteries for their shows. And Entertainers will certainly receive this money in the form of tips as people realize that the Entertainer can provide this service outside of the cantina only by buying batteries.
If the members of these forums agree with me, then I hope that we can use our correspondents to send a strong enough message. Or, alternatively, if there are some major flaws in my suggestion that I am overlooking, then I hope to see some constructive input that will either strengthen my argument or make me realize the folly of this suggestion.
As a Dancer for five months now, I think this would be a bad idea.
Look what's happened to hospitals. They are virtually empty because of the medical modules. Instead of doctors doing their healing and buffing in hospitals, now they're all in front of starports shouting their annoying shouts.
I understand that not having these modules limits the healers to only one location, but I'd hate to see entertainers adding to the starportspam, hawking their healing.
Kreistor wrote:
As a Dancer for five months now, I think this would be a bad idea.
Look what's happened to hospitals. They are virtually empty because of the medical modules. Instead of doctors doing their healing and buffing in hospitals, now they're all in front of starports shouting their annoying shouts.
I understand that not having these modules limits the healers to only one location, but I'd hate to see entertainers adding to the starportspam, hawking their healing.
I agree that medical modules have made the med centers pretty much ghost towns. Here's a hypothetical question:
Would the med centers still be empty if the medical modules provided only 10% to 50% of the effectiveness outside of the med center?
If you got a Health buff of only 800 from a Master Doctor out in the street, would you accept that or would you go to the Med Center and try for 2000? If a Medic could heal 80 Action wounds in the med center, will he spend his time in the street in order to heal only 20?
Some medics would, certainly. If someone absolutely wants healing but doesn't want to go across town to the med center, he may be willing to pay the medic for a "house call" in the street.
And with that in mind, I suggested reduced healing capabilities (and xp gain too!) if entertainers use those modules. Someone may be happy to use an entertainer outside the starport so that he can run and make his ship when he hears it arriving, but ultimately, he would benefit a lot more if he made the extra effort to hike it to the cantina and get healed there.
If there were reduced healing capabilities in the street, then the number-one fan of the street performer would be the passer-by. Someone with 500 Mind wounds will go to the cantina. Someone with 20 Mind wounds will say, "Hey, since I'm here, might as well relax a bit."
And sadly, cantinas are already empty. There may be some zombies, but the cantinas are good as empty. Such a proposition would empower the real entertainer to find other avenues of entertainment. If he wishes to stay in the superior cantina, good. If he doesn't like the cantina atmosphere, he's welcome to invest in batteries and take on the less-effective street corner.
I hope that makes sense. I agree that cantinas should not be abandoned. The devs don't want to abandon them either, which is why I suggested reduced healing (and other ideas that I borrowed from others).
Is there something else you can think of that could make street performers viable without emptying the cantinas completely? The more suggestions we can throw out, the more options are available. I'd like to see something like this happen, but I would not want to hollow out the current system.
What I need an "Entertainment Droid" for:
1. A place to carry a change of costumes
2.A device that willcharge my green bar thingy (action?) back-up as I dance, so I don't have to stop.
3. A device that will protect me when I am attacked! No, not go guns blazing attacking the attacker, but somehting that will actually protect me so that I can get away! It would like project a screen around me or something. I am really really bad at combat and I just need something to help me if I am alone /not win the battle, just let me survive.
4. A device that acts as my manager! Let people load into a buff que and allow the device while I am continousily dancingapply my buff to everybody that's in the que. You want to be buffed, go talk to my droid.
As a master entertainer, master dancer, master image designer, skilled musician, I would hate seing droids for entertainers. Why ? the annoying sound they make. I would much more prefer seing entertainer get more points so i could master all entertainer professions. Personally, i never leave my cantina. And street entertaining dont appeal me, id prefer camp healing to be as complete as cantina healing.
mind buffs are my main source of incom and having to run into a cantina t do them will e a pain i avoid cantinas as much as possible as it is anyway. especially soince my fave dance is lyrical 2 and no room to do it in a cantina without bumping into everythimng and ruining the effect by rolling thru a chair.
I didn't even think about droid noise. That should be added as an Entertainer concern for the upcoming publish.
While beeps, whirrs, and clicks add to the atmosphere of probots, mouse droids, and protocol droids, the best sound to add to the atmosphere of entertainer droids would be silence. So, the temptation to add noises should be stifled.
Or, if noises must be included, silence the droids while stationary or on patrol (because you know the Entertainers are going to use a patrolling droid to shoot off timed effects).
Good point, that.