Dancer Archive

Hi there, been a while since I've done one of these. Mostly been focusing on one or two issues at a time and I think most of our issues that haven't been solved yet haven't changed. However, I want to check with you folks again just to make sure we're both on the same page still and send another friendly reminder to our dev which problems we see are the biggest. So if you would please, post the issues you feel are the biggest concern and a solution to that issue if you can think of one. Up to 5 issues only please, less is okay, but don't go over.

Issue 1: Our missions are still broke.. what gives? Ravenmist get off your ass and get them fixed!

Possible Solution: Umm... like fix them.. its easy right?

Hehe, I think you folks get the idea.

1) MORE flourishes for lyrical & exotic

2) BETTER new flourishes... the new ones for formal & poplock look robotic and mechanical, they look like they were rushed out to us and i cringe when they're performed.

3) Make mind buffs easier... doing /setp requires both dancer and watcher to actively perform an action... why not have a lesser action that a dancer could execute like a skill and apply a small boost to mind?

4) Synchro dances with /groupdancestart ( was this done? did i miss it? )

5) Spread out exotic dances over more than 2 boxes, use 4. I've never seen anyone do straight up "exotic" ( you look lost anyway ), but why should exotic be the dream dance every dancer strives for??

Ok, guess thats my five...

mel

1 - I'd like some fine tuning tweaks for mind-buffing:things like aconfirmation message to let you know if someone is watching you when you /setperform would be nice. Perhaps a message to let you know when another dancer has already used /setperform on someone you try to buff would be helpful.

2 - Mind-buffing self. I'm tired of being the weak link in a group when taking incaps from mind damage.

3 - Fill out the missing flourishes

4 - A command to opt-out of bandflourishes. I really dislike seeing my character doing particular flourishes.

5- Fix all the small cantinas which don't letpeople register (Dathomir, Dantooine, etc)

I might have come up with a new issue. Last week, I went to Dantooine and Dathomir and found that I could not register my location in the taverns/cantinas there. People on some of the boards have been asking, nay, crying for entertainers to go to these places.

I had to stand on the steps and wave to people so they'd know I was there, when I should have been able to use my register location skill.


Another way to get entertainers into the less popular cantinas might be to put higher paying missions on the terminals for those locations. The same could be done for hotels and theaters. After all, these are 'classier' places and could logically pay better. Those less utilized cantinas are starving for entertainers and could also logically pay more to entice people there.

Regular mission terminals give missions according to skill level. How about making the entertainer ones do the same thing? Seems to me that the mechanism is already there, it shouldn't be too tough to bring the entertainer terminals into line. Masters should be making more than Novices from an entertainer mission.


On a positive note, I love the new dancer buff! I'm very pleased that it's been changed into a targetable thing.

However, even tho' it makes LAMERs useful, I am totally against healing being made a targetable thing. Talking to my customers, chatting with the other live entertainers, and working on my dance routines gives me quite enough to do all at once without have to target everyone who wants healing. Don't give me any of those silly boxes to click to reassure people that I'm at my keyboard either. Screw the LAMERs, not the live performers.

---

Badeb wrote:

4 - A command to opt-out of bandflourishes. I really dislike seeing my character doing particular flourishes.

---

There is a command already to opt-out of bandflourishes: /bandflourish off This command makes it so you do not accept any bandflourishes. You can accept them again with /bandflourish on.

1) AFKers,make the optional afk flag not optional and have it bump you after 20 mins

2) Make the buff easier to use. Maybe with a message saying when it is done, make it only require /setperform and a new command /setperformdone instead of /watch and /stopwatch, so that we can make sure that it's given properly.

3) Fix the lyrical/formal base dance! No more airplane!

4) I like the idea of /groupstartd, that would be great fun for performances.

5) Make all taverns/hotels registerable.

Thanks for hearing our concerns Ravenmist!

1. Eliminate afk healing of any type or sort (number one by far)

2. Falling down ,,,eliminate entirely

3. Mind buff takes far too long

4. Action drains should be reduced for Master dancers

5. New flourishes

1) Falling As we move up the dance tree the possibilites of falling should decrease and at master should be non existent.

2) Missions Realistic payouts based on level.

3) Group start dance command, group change dance command, improved/new flourishes that actually go with the dance.

4) The ability to register at outposts, hq, adventure planets ,non traditional cantinas. Maybe even a "strobe light type effect" when you register it activates, then people will know an entertainer is in a cantina without looking at the world map

I have other issues but at the moment I don't believe the dev's can come up with a solution to the afk problem without making it more difficult for the non afk folks. I'd like to see the ability to use more diverse props in our routines, self/group choreography (the ability to take a flourish from one dance and use it with another) .

*hugs*

Caly

1. AFKers


2. AFKers


3. AFKers


4. AFKers


5. AFKers

I can live with anything else. Missions have been a joke from the start, if it was too much to fix it for weeks, I don't think we should waste DEV time on something that is so hard to fix. < /sarcasm >

1) Easier Buff - Love Mihnea's idea above on that one.

2) Fix buff not resetting on death.

3) Missing flourishes - No flourish for any dance should repeat.

4) System message - A notice of who is /watching you...

5) Action costs - lower at master level.

Here are my top 5. Please note they are my personal top 5 issues. I don't claim anyone else should have them (lest I be flamed for naming falling number 1 again, heheh).

Issue #1 - Falling - We fall too much. Entirely too much. It is humiliating and looks stupid. Last night my character fell five times in a row doing exotic. That's ridiclous. She's nearing master dancer and she falls that often? I am sorry but this is just plain nuts. To add insult to injury, while they seem to think all classes "need" to crit fail sometimes, the one class that appears to be immune to crit fails is the musician. So in a band, the musicians never hit a bad note, but the master dancers fall once a minute?? Something is wrong with this. I don't mind falling for novices, but not for masters.

Solution to issue #1 - There are two possible ones. Easiest is to just take falling out of the game, period. Actually, though, that's not my preference. I would like to see falling tied into the technique line (since after all the title of it is "skilled dancer"). Have each box decrease the chance (whatever it is) of falling by 20%, and master the final 20%, so that a Master Dancer never, ever falls (she's a master... she shouldn't!). So for example, let's say the crit fail rate is 10%... It could be 8% after tech box 1, 6% after box 2, 4% after box 3, 2% after box 4, and 0% after master. I would also like to see it that all dancers have zero chance of falling unless they are doing their current highest dance. If I am doing poplock2 as my highest, then popular1 should be a cake walk since to get poplock2 I had to do popular1 for hours. I shouldn't fall on that any more. If you do this, then at least a dancer has some control... I can chose to (a) dance my highest dance with the chance of falling, or (b) dance a lower dance, with no chance of falling. If I want the dance to look good, I choose (b).

Issue #2: LAMErs - Long-term Afk Macro Entertainers are horrible for the dance and music professions. They (a) make dancers seem "dime a dozen" since they are always there, (b) make us seem like we do not actually work and earn our titles and abilities, and (c) cause tons of disrespect to be aimed at us from classes that cannot (realistically) AFK Macro. Plus, they turn the cantina into what Velvet-Dancer aptly calls a room full of "zombies." They ruin the atmosphere in the cantina. The ability to do this needs to be taken out of the game.

Solution to issue #2 - Lots of these have been discussed, but I think the two best are either of the following. 1. Make /startdance take no arguments, so you HAVE to button-press to choose the dance. This means you could macro till your action bar goes away, and then your dancer would stop, and you would not be able to /startdance basic2 or whatever, because you'd get an error message: "Command basic2 not recognized." Bye-bye AFK Macroing. 2. Give dancers a chance to "save" the fall (see above) like surveyors have a chance to improve their results. Bring a popup menu up at random times, "Your dancer has tripped -- you may use an extra 100 action to save the fall -- do you? Y/N." Suspend the dance... no flourishing happens (macros are paused, whatever) until something is clicked. This lets the dancer AFK dance, but not flourish, so the xp would be gained much more slowly.

Issue #3: Technique abilities (effects) are just eye candy but should add something - I love to do lights and smoke bombs and stuff but it costs big action and there is zero gain except asethetics. I do it any way because I like it to look nice but it seems reasonable that doing more of these should help people forget their BF and stuff faster. After all, they are even named things like "distract" and "dazzle." I would like to see xp gained go up, or healing rate speed up, or both, when you use these abilities.

Solution to issue #3 - This is pretty easy to do. Just make each effect give some xp, just like a flourish do, and I'd be happy. Or, connect the heal rate to the number of these that you do, so the more you do, the faster you heal for your given healing skill level. Now this shouldn't be over-done, but I envision that a "Skilled Dancer" going nuts with the visuals and with say only 2 boxes of BF heal, might do as well as another who does no visuals but has 4 boxes. Of course she'd get tired really fast, so in the end it might not make a huge difference in terms of actual healing efficiency, but I think the visuals should give some benefits. They shouldn't just "look nice."

Issue #4: Mind Buffing needs data - By this I mean, I /setperform, but I have no idea how long it will take or how well I am doing. I have to guess. We can't find out until the guy stops watching, and then if I didn't dance long enough it's too late. That's annoying. Crafters can tell what aspects of their items they can experiment with and pre-determine even the failure chance. We should be able, by watching our customer, to tell when he has been fully buffed or how long it will be before he is.

Solution to issue #4 - Easy to solve. The game must be tracking something to figure this out. Make it visible to the dancer. Produce a little "buffing meter" progress bar that shows up in the lower corner of the screen and inches upward until it hits "max possible buff." Then I can stop and the guy can be on his way. Take the guesswork out of it.

Well... I only have four I guess. But that should keep ya busy for a while. :-)

C

I know that things like additional flourishes and something to do with action costs are in the works already so I won't mention them as they are already 'in progress'.

I agree totally with Chessack's list, and I can even add a 5th point:

5: group commands for dancers that allow /groupstartdance, /groupchangedance, /groupstopdance and perhaps even /groupdistract 1 etc. No solution as they just need to add the functions in, right?

Heheh...

I should've known I could count on Velvet to find a 5th one for me. Thanks, Velvet!

C