Dancer Archive

In a recent "State of the Game address", Holocron listed the most popular and most mastered elite professions as follows:

Most popular advanced professions:

1. Creature Handler
   
2. Pistoleer
   
3. Bounty Hunter
   
4. Rifleman
   
5. Merchant

Most commonly mastered advanced professions:

1. Creature Handler
   
2. Architect
   
3. Doctor
   
4. Dancer
   
5. Weaponsmith

There are some notable things here.

First, is that Creature Handler is the only profession that appears on both lists. None of the other "most popular" professions are on the list of those with the most masters.

Second, is that the other four of the "most commonly mastered' list are all macro-able to one extent or another and are all "grinding" classes involving crafting and/or healing. "Grinding" here means "able to advance through endless repitition of certain game actions".

Dancer appears on the list but Musician doesn't. I have to admit that I was pretty surprised by that. Speaking from experience, dancing takes a heckuva lot more work and time to advance in than music does. I'm not sure how to interpret this. Does it simply mean that dancers are more dedicated? That more dancers use macro-botting to get ahead than musicians? Is it simply that the dancers outnumber the musicians?

Is it really an "honor" to appear on this list or does it signify that there's some sort of problem with the dancer profession (and by extension, entertainment as a whole)?

I'm interested in your interpretations of this data. (Granted, it's sketchy. Holo doesn't define what "most commonly mastered" really means.) I'm considering posting this info in the entertainment forum to gauge reactions there but I'm posting it here first because it y'all rather directly. What do you think it all means?

I would point out the difference between "most popular" and "most Mastered" -- it strikes me that your point about the Mastered professions all being macroable to some extent is a good one. So "most popular" may be those professions that players find to be fun while "most Mastered" may be those which get botted to death by impatient powergamers.

On Raph's (Holo's) website (http://www.legendmud.org/raph/ ) he has some writings on multiplayer games. One of my favorite quotes is from his "Laws of Online World Design". He has this to say about macroing:

• No matter what you do, someone is going to automate the process of playing your world.


• Corollary: 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.

I only hope he takes his own advice.

One thing I'm curious about, which only Holo can really answer, is whether "most commonly mastered" means "more masters in this profession than in other professions" or if it means "the ratio of masters to apprentices in this profession is higher than in other professions".

The one thing it DOES say is that most players who take up dancing probably see it through to the very end. The comparison to musician here may be that musicians tend to get up to where they're satisfied with their current selection of tunes/instruments and stop to spend their skill points on other things.

The funny thing is that I see master musicians frequently but I rarely see master dancers. Maybe it's because master dancers don't have the "flash" that the master musician has. The Nalargon is a big neon sign that says "Hey, look at me, I'm a master!" whereas Exotic3 and Exotic4 look pretty much the same as Exotic1 and Exotic2 to the casual observer. I'm not even sure I'd recognize Lyrical, but I imagine that Lyrical2 is probably just a minor variation on that.

That seems just a bit unfair now that I look at it in that light.

I was a bit surprised to see Dancer on this list myself. Some thoughts below.

As for most popular: Creature handler, of course, should not have surprised anyone - even Holo states later that CH is probably still too good even after the last nerf. As for the other four in the most popular, all professions that do not have any real reason to get to master. Pistoleer - just get novice which isn't hard for many people since a lot of professions require pistol xp, heck even I have almost enough for Novice Pistoleer - use Bounty Hunter or Smuggler specials instead. Bounty Hunter - Investigation too much of a pain and all you really need is LLC and EyeShot anyway. Rifleman - see Pistoleer above although many work up Sniping at least. Merchant - people get the vendor line and don't worry about anything else.

Most mastered: I assume he is talking # novices to # masters. Creature Handler not a real surprise although I know a lot of people who see little reason to master it. Makes me wonder just how many CHs there really are. Doctor - always useful to have around. Architect and Weaponsmith - highly in demand for harvesters/PA houses and new guns.

Dancer - I would make the assumption that musician isn't on here just because there are more dancers and more dancers take it all the way to master dancer. Also, casual entertainers (ie fighter-jocks who don't want to tip for mind healing or want to be able to heal themselves in camps) are more likely work up music skill (since dancing is too "girlie") and might take Novice musician which would further leave more un-mastered musicians - I have meet a few people who have done this. Then, of course, you have dancers like me that got Novice Musician after getting Master Entertainer and don't have enough skill points to complete a single skill line.