Dancer Archive
Thread: State of the Dancer Profession 10-31-03
Several changes to the Correspondent program, thanks to our good friend Thunderheart, one of those is the addition of a "State of the Profession" that's for you and our dev both. So, please let me know what you think. Without further delay, I give you the Dancers State of the Profession for October 31st, 2003.
Begin report -
The dancing and entertaining professions in general has appealed mainly to two different niche groups of people since the game has gone live. The way I see it we have the group of people who are highly social, love to chat and enjoy interaction with people, and those that see it merely as a means to an end.
What I would call the core group of entertainers is the social ones, the ones who are in there, at their keyboards trying to have fun and at the same time, trying to make other peoples time spent in the game more enjoyable.
The other group, the ones that see this as a means to an end, typically in the past, got into it in order to make someone to AFK heal their PA members, or think they can make a quick buck by entertaining. This has recently been added to however by those who are being told to Master the Profession because a little cube told them too.
The second group has been a negative impact on the first for several reasons which have been amplified greatly with the addition of the holocrons. The first and fore most in my opinion is the damage to the overall image of the profession they have caused. You see it all the time in comments like, "Why should I tip Dancers when their all AFK?". This problem has made it increasingly difficult over time for the profession to get any semblance of respect from our peers. The other smaller complaints about this group include things like afk spamming messages, making it difficult for those who are really there to get noticed etc. that Iseebeing nearly asimportant. It is the first complaint that is the primary reason I see changes needing to be made to put long term AFK macroing to a stop.
AFK issues aside, I see the dancing profession definitely improving in the last few months and it appears that it will continue to do so in the months to come. This is very encouraging to myself and many other dancers. However, there are still several issues that are a major concern among us that have not been solved and desperately need to be as well as a few that would be a dramatic improvement to our profession.
The desperately need to be fixed issues I see include our Missions, and the graphical bug that goes along with our Lyrical and Formal dances. The changes/fixes that we need that would be a dramatic improvement to our profession include a reduction or elimination to our fall rate, and a better way to apply our buffs (this primary is an issue with not being able to keep track of the buffs progress, we need a way to see how well we're doing so we know when the buff is finished)
Along with those are several other important issues such as fixing registration in many places, additions to our deny services to base who we deny on things like faction and the ability to buff our own mind. All of these changes listed above are fixes or modifications to things we already have. As far as additions we need go, I think the obvious is of course, more flourishes for the dances we have. (Good flourishes that is) Of course more dances would be great as well. There are still more of course, but these issues are the primary ones our profession faces right now.
In conclusion I'd like to sum things up more or less. AFK Entertainers are a problem, (not all afk entertainers but unfortunately there's no way to really separate the problem ones from the non problem ones ) this problem has grown largely recently due to holocrons, something needs to be done. For the most part otherwise I think our profession is functional and is making good progress. Several improvements and changes above need addressing, some badly. With a change to the AFK situation and a few fixes and a change or two, I think our profession will be in terrific shape and perhaps we'll be able to rebuild our reputation and really enjoy all that being a Dancer has to offer.
End of report -
Thank you all for your time and your help, you've been a valuable asset to me as I try to get changes to our profession made. I hope you all stick with it and hopefully we'll get what we're looking for sooner then later. Also please note this is not a bug or issue report per say, so some things may be left out that I will most certainly include in my issues report.
So Raven... what do you propose as a "fix" for the AFKers? 
The idea of nullifying XP gains after a certain period of time (10 minutes, 20, whatever...) seems to be a reasonable way to make AFKing faaaaar less appealing, and almost utterly useless, without actually removing the ability to do it altogether.
Case in pointwhy AFK isn't always "bad":Sometimes mylittle boy just won't fall asleep after I've put him to bed (my primary playing time is after he's fallen asleep of course), and nothing but me going in there and reading two or three more stories to him will settle him down. Often, I end up dozzing off myself... LOL so what was originally supposed to be a 10-15 minute AFK ends up being an hour. 
We got plenty of those already.
Ravenmist:
Thank you for your comrehensive report.
Do I make a third class of dancer? I _LOVE_ the social aspects of dancing and cantina life, but I also periodically take advantage of afk-ing in odd hours (work, sleep). I don't feel that this lessens my quality as a dancer. When I am at the keyboard I am extremely interactive. Additionally, I don't expect tips when I'm afk-ing, and am rather surprised when I find that I have made money while away.
Unfortunately, there isn't a way to award xp to dancers that are interactive. I wish that there was a way.
Please don't hate me for not being around occasionally! I'll make it up to you when I'm on!!
I do have to agree that for the most part, our profession is now in a VERY good "state". (I'd hate to see what the "state of our profession" posts look like in the Chef / BE / DE forums must look like...) I can speak from experience in saying that since our buff actually has some solid worth now, I have become a very popular girl where I live.
And who do we have to thank for this???
RAVENMIST!!!! 
/bow we're not worthy
Heheh...
I still love ya'll, like I said, I don't see all AFK Dancing as being evil the way some do. I'm a little more flex on it and still think it has its place but many of them are causing our profession some serious problems and I can't just ignore that.
Oh **edit**... this is turning into an AFK thread again.. I knew it would.. doh. Please just let me know your overall feelings about the report, if I got it right or not, lets not go on about AFK issues, they've been discussed to death in tons of threads already. Believe me when I say I'm aware of how each of you feel on the subject and of all the solutions and ideas you have. I read all the posts on this board, trust me when I say your voice has been heard.
jexra wrote:
only problem with the folks using danging as a means to an ends also holocrons is even if they eliminate AFK dancing they will still need to gain the skill so you'll have a person dancing that really doesn't want to be dancing (I can see all kinds of problems with this) The devs really need to make a statement saying that Dancing or Musicianship aren't required for opening the FS. THen most of your afk people will dissapear.
This isno different then telling a dancer they have to Master Weaponsmithing.
May not want to do it but thats the breaks if they want to open FS. I personally hate the FS system the way it seems to be.
C
"I'm a little more flex"
Ooooh.... I've never seen you "flex"... 