Dancer Archive

Message Edited by PoetDancer on 08-29-2005 04:04 AM

I agree we need content. However I'll tell you as a PvE player as well that the content for that gets very repititous and boring as well. It is my friends in my guild that keep me here, not the "go kill another MOB" grind that the developers of SOE have built. The current development team has little to no imagination and sadly made Kashyyk as reptitious as everything else. Even better all new content comes through expansions now so you get to spend even more money to avoid the repitition and get new quests that do nothing new or inivative just get you new loot items to put in some virtual house somewhere.

So although I agree completely I will also say that my friends and the fact that the original developers thought of cool, non-traditional stuff like entertainers is what keeps me here. No other game offers the wealth of non-combat items this game offers.

I agree we need more content.

But as to your other point... when did anyone other than the few RP-oriented non-entertainers, and other entertainers, ever come to see us for performances? Even with BF, they were coming in for a heal, not a performance. The performance was just, if anything, a cool or unusual way (compared to other games) to get a heal.

So I am not sure what the point is about the "performance" vs. "service" issue, because to just about everyone but some of us, we were providing a service, not a performance that they really wanted to see.

I explained why this is a while ago but it's worth reiterating here. In real life people watch dancers or listen to music for entertainment, as a break from real life. But the game, for players, *is* the entertainment. Players do not need us to entertain them (as players) because they are (presumably) already being entertained by the game (else they would not play it). This makes entertainer the ultimate RP profession... because you're not really entertaining the other player (the game is doing that), but your character is entertaining the other character.

The problem is that most people do not roleplay; they do not think "OK my character would want to get some entertainment now, so that's what I will have him do." Instead they think, "I want Jedi so I will go grind some more." (Or the equivalent.)

So unless we find some way to magically turn all the arcade gamers who play this game into actual roleplayers, I can't see how we will ever make it so players are sending their toons to us for performances, rather than for a service. I'm not saying that I like how it is, mind... I'm just saying, that's how it is.

C

I sympathize with your feelings, PoetDancer. What I'd be interested in seeing, though, is some concrete examples of this content that you're asking for. What can the devs give us that will make us "feel" like we're giving a performance? What tools can they implement in the game that would make other players be so impressed that they'd go out of their way just to see the performance?

How do you represent "talent" in a video game? What activities would you pursue in a video game that would make you feel as if your dancer was pursuing her profession at 10am on a Wednesday?

Let's face it, you have to live within certain limits in a video game. How would a real life dancer spend her time at 10am on a Wednesday? She'd most likely be spending her time in a studio practicing her routines. Maybe just in her bedroom in the case of a cantina dancer. How would she find gigs? She wouldn't walk into the local pub and start doing the rhumba. She'd have to search for open gigs. She'd have to promote herself or use an agent who promoted her. She'd have to audition, coordinate with the band or arrange for music. She'd do a limited engagement and move on to the next venue.

Is any of that fun? Not for the average player. The average player just wants to dance when she feels like it. Would it be fun to "choreograph" the dance by designing a "dance language" that would let you write your own original dance macros? Maybe, but you're acting like a programmer at that point, not like a dancer. Once you get this wonderful dance choreographed, what is it that will bring the audience in to see it?

Why should people take time out from their game playing in order to be your audience if there's no in-game benefit to them for doing so?

Well... lots of players don't give a hoot about context at all, Panth. They are just in it to get the best "stuff", be it stats, weapons, becoming a Jedi because it's "leet", or whatever. Context is totally irrelevent, as is immersion, to such people.

C

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Chessack wrote:
Well... lots of players don't give a hoot about context at all, Panth. They are just in it to get the best "stuff", be it stats, weapons, becoming a Jedi because it's "leet", or whatever. Context is totally irrelevent, as is immersion, to such people.

C

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I think the ones who do not enjoy any immersive content is the minority. Even many of the "leets" still enjoy the immersive elements like the clothes, character appearance, etc. I've had occassions when combat players have stopped and watched as a troup of dancers synchronized especially well. I've seen lots of players enjoy what we do when they actually see it. In fact they often go "WOW". So Sirii's point that there is no mechanic today that entices them to watch us perform is very relevant. I don't know how to fix it though since the current dev team can't even get very original with well understood elements like combat. Their best enhancement was to copy all the other combat systems and really distort the one unique one.

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Chessack wrote:
Well... lots of players don't give a hoot about context at all, Panth. They are just in it to get the best "stuff", be it stats, weapons, becoming a Jedi because it's "leet", or whatever. Context is totally irrelevent, as is immersion, to such people.

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Panthu wrote:
It just can't get in the way of their other goals or then they start resenting it.

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Yes but when the goal is to engage in non-stop grinding and loot-getting without ever having any "down time" like going into a cantina, well... we're kind of at an impasse then aren't we, in terms of an entertainer's role.

C

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Panthu wrote:
I think the problem comes from trying to force them to be the source of all of our gameplay or forcing them to have to come to us. If it was just an equally rewarding experience for them, many would come on their own.

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Yes, that is all fine in theory, and I agree... in theory.

The problem continues to be, how does one put that into practice? How do we make it an "equally rewarding experience" to go to watch a dancer when many people define fun as the act of getting into in-game combat either with NPCs/Critters (PVE) or other players (PVP)?

C

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SlickRiptide wrote:
I may be misunderstanding,but PoetDancer's point seems to be that she(?) doesn't want a game mechanic at all. Look at the title of this thread. She wants an "entertainer game" built into the greater Galaxies game that will do "something" for entertainers that will make us real-life entertainment, so to speak. She wants to have the audience come into the cantina to see HER, not because the audience member want's "Buff X" and any old entertainer who happens to be hanging around will be adequate for his need.

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I think you may have just helped me figure out what PoetD has been asking for (and not getting) all along. She wants her performances to be appreciated by, and entertaining to, other players. Whereas I want my character's performance to be appreciated by, and entertaining to, other characters.

Now make no mistake about it, I also hope that the players of those characters have at least a passably good time while their character is being entertained by Dejah, and I take great pride in the many compliments I get from players that I am a good player of a dancer. But it's really about -- or should be about -- our characters interacting with each other.

After all, even though we are rather sloppy about it and say things like "I killed Slick in PVP", we all know what we really mean is that my character killed SlickRiptide's character (and even that was only until he cloned). Now, if I can't actually shoot and kill Slick's character, and a doc can't actually heal a cut on Slick's arm, and a smuggler can't actually hack into Slick's actual at-home PC, then why is it that we expect just one prof -- entertainers -- to affect players rather than characters?

The original implementation of entertainers assumed nothing about the players. All that was assumed was that, after fighting a long time, your character would grow battle-weary, and need to take his mind off of the stress and woes of combat. This character would then go and watch a cantina dancer shake her booty and forget all about his troubles for a while, much he way Bob Hope and the U.S.O. did during all the wars from WW II on. The problem was that the players of these battle-weary troops were not pleased with the downtime as players (the game was not entertaining to them, no matter what it was for their characters) and, since the bulk of players (I am sorry, but this is true) are gamers, not roleplayers (there is a difference), they started to complain about it. And so we have what we have today.

Funnily enough, there are LOTS of non-combat, downtime things that players have to do every single day that, if they perhaps still grumble about them, they accept as "we need it to make the world work." Searching far and wide for that perfect crafted item on a vendor for the right price is one. I have spent whole afternoons combing the server looking for this or that thing. That's major down-time, when I want to be dancing or in combat, but I accept it as the price you pay for having a living, breathing economy. And so does just about everyone else.... except, of course, when it comes to entertainment.

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SlickRiptide wrote:
You have what I'll dub "Chessack's Law": The game itself is entertainment. Who needs to waste time in a cantina when you're already being entertained by whatever you're doing? If non-entertainers really wanted to see dance and music performances, they'd be in the cantinas right now saying "Where's the show? Why aren't there any entertainers here?"

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Chessack's Law... ROFL.

OK, you can call it that.

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SlickRiptide wrote:
A game mechanic, whether it's a penalty like Battle Fatigue or a benefit like an inspiration buff, is neccesary to give those players incentive. Once they have that incentive, then they give us the opportunity to "wow" them with our social skills or our performance skills or both.

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This is a key point.

The fact is, all game mechanics are designed to either encourage, or more commonly force, players to act out their characters properly. This is simply and strictly true. The default assumption is that players would NOT act their characters out properly, if you took all restrictions away. That is why we have rules. To force you to play your character "right", in a sense. So, for instance, in D&D, you have to rest every so often. Why? Because it is proper for an adventurer to rest each day (it is exhausting work), and you will see rest in every fantasy book there is (Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Eye of the World, pick your poison). But the designers of D&D knew that players would not want to bother stopping to rest because it is "down time" and "boring". Yet they also knew it would seriously hamper the immersion if they didn't. So they put in forced rest periods for the players' own good knowing that, in the long run, it would be better. The same was true for encumbrance (without it, players would just laden their PCs down with 10 tons of loot and useful items, which is both unrealistic and allows them to ignore the important tactical and strategic choices that go with, for instance, only being able to carry one type of weapon or shield). In fact, name your rule, it is there to force players to be realistic about their roleplaying experience, because designers know that left to their own devices, players will be entirely unrealistic and, thus, out of character (and often out-of-genre as well).

So.. I don't think it is really useful to lament that there is some game mechanic to dancing, be it buffs or (IMO, much better) BF, or what have you. The fact is that it isn't just entertainment giving you a buff that is a game mechanic forcing people to act more "realistic" and "in character" -- all the rules of an RPG (at least, in theory) are designed to do this. Otherwise, why can't you just pick up any weapon and one-shot kill any creature you want? Well... because that wouldn't be realistic. You have to practice with a weapon, and get better at it (experience points, levels, skill boxes). You have work to find a good weapon, not just materialize it out of thin air (vendor searches, buying from crafters, looting from creatures). I could go on and on... The point is that all games have game mechanics, and I don't really think it is useful to deride their existence. If you don't want game mechanics there are MUSH-like systems out there (called "talkers") where there are no game mechanics and you can just RP whatever you darn well please. I've played them a bit... they're fun for a while and then it gets old.

In the end, there needs to be a mechanic in place for anything you want players to do. Want them to grind Jedi till the banthas come home? Put in a mechanic for them to do it. Want them NOT to grind Jedi? Don't put in a mechanic that allows it. It's very simple, really. And it applies to dancers as well. If you want the players to watch dancers, there needs to be something in the game mechanics that makes going to a dancer matter. Just going "to watch" is not going to appeal to anyone but the few true RPers (people who could play reasonably well in a "talker" MUSH).

C

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Chessack wrote:

Yes, that is all fine in theory, and I agree... in theory.

The problem continues to be, how does one put that into practice? How do we make it an "equally rewarding experience" to go to watch a dancer when many people define fun as the act of getting into in-game combat either with NPCs/Critters (PVE) or other players (PVP)?

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PvE isn't too hard to imagine. Variations on escort missions could be done with Ent Players instead of NPCs needing guarded. They could body guard you while you performed and be basically a bouncer. The Ent player could give the mission, it could reward in XP, Credits, or Loot on completion.

It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to develop story wise, there are already so many common mission and quest types that could substitute in live players (us) instead of NPCs.

PvP? The Spy thing with getting base times works ok for basic interaction. For long performances? It would have to get back to some kind of area effect buffing - short term, not long term - like they'd have to use it while in range. Probably easy enough to do, but I don't think we'd like that so much.

The Tournament Cantina entry point idea may be a better idea for PvP inclusion. Eventhough it's not directly related to performance, it does support the whole "social hub" idea and take advantage of downtime.It's apretty popular requestand I think it would get us a lot of warm bodies if that's what we're after.

I think most people that talk about it now base it on KotOR, but it's been requested in the combat forums for a long time. The way it worked in KotOR was you went to the back of the Cantina and there were view screens for watching the arena fights. If you talked to the Hutt in the back, you could sign up as a fighter and it would warp you in.

So, Cantinas could kind of be like the beach in GW where you enter and get kicked back after a tournament round, heh. It would still be adding to the social hub and taking advantage of the tournament players' downtime... so not really that far off from the original goals. I mean, people talk on the beach in that game while they wait to go in, why wouldn't they in a cantina?

I think there are lots of ways to take better advantage of people's downtime and giving them some actual uptime rewards with out having to make it feel so forced.