Dancer Archive

This is coming from a non-Entertainer Politician. The intent of this post is not to "Troll" for flames, or insite a riot. Rather, to gather a clear understanding of the Entertainers point-of-view (POV).

As a Civic Leader, I am grappling with ideas on how to get entertainers into my citie's cantina. The PC Cantinas across all galazies are pretty much empty. The exceptions being the cities that are located around intense POIs. Mine is a city of merchants, primarily, with a healthy dose of shooters mixed in. We have plenty of entertainers who call the city home, but they seem to migrate to the various planetary hubs (cornet, theed, anchorhead and bestine)to get their experience and to hawk their skills.

I have toyed with the idea of an entertainer "payroll" where by the city would pay resident entertainers to spend time in the cantina. We also have a couple entertainer "Alts" that do a fair amount of AFK entertaining in the cantina.

But what I see as the root of the problem is a system that pretty much dictates that you, as entertainers, all bunch up in the big city cantinas. What if there were an incentive to spread out? Here are a couple of ideas, both reward and penalty based, for you to digest:

Building Codes: Have you ever noticed in some RL bars, hotel conference rooms, and school gymnasiums there is a plaque that diplays the room/structures maximum capacity? What if the cantinas around the planet had a similar "Cap?" Perhaps one for entertainers, and one for spectators. If the building was full, you would have to move one to another location. the CONS of this plan would be that during dead times in the game, the popular locations would still be the only place to go for mind heals and experience.

Salaries: Rather than have the mayor of a city manually pay out to entertainers, perhaps an automated system could be employed. A mayor could specify how much he/the city will pay per hour of entertainment, or perhaps per amount of damage healed. The mayor could also speciy how much he/the city is willing to commit to this each week. A dancer/musisian/entertainer could check the "employment terminal" in the cantina and see how much money is to be made. To ensure that there is still some activity in the NPC cities, the system could also include "mission/employment" type terminals in the NPC cantinas.

Experience/Heal Rate Caps: Perhaps a structure would divide the amount of available experience to be had from the spectators between the folks doing the entertaining. This would have the effect of the dancers competing for the attention of the patrons. The system already works similar to this. It would just get an adjustment to make entertainers decide to stay or go. There would also be a mechanism that would limit the amount of healing a patron got if too many folks were oggling the same scantilly clad dancer. The flip side of this is an increase in the Experience/Heal rates for PC Cantinas.

Once again, I implore you, please don't take this as a desire to NERF your professions in any way. I would only be in favor of a system that was mutually benificial to all, and had the effect of making our PC cantinas more inviting to you. I have also seen where much of this has been discussed in the past. Re-stating your position is welcome.

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Jaela wrote:

So what you almost need to do, is offer something else, besides just credits. Maybe to go along on guild hunts, or some other activity that will offer a better experience in game play in addition to just entertaining.

Or maybe, just have entertainers on "call". Come when needed might be a solution.

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I agree. Holding player events is a good idea. Organizing hunts on the tough planets (ie Tat for Krayt dragons) is good or maybe raiding bases and just have everyone come to your cantina to heal. Maybe have a doc on stand-bye for it too. Try looking under the player event threads for ideas. There might be something there that'll help. There has to be an audience though or no entertainer will go, which is why player cantinas are empty. You could try paying one of your city dancers/musicians to just stay there and try advertising your cantina to bring people in. Especially if it's near any place alot of people frequent for missions (ie. the Tusken Ft.). Except don't spam. Maybe advertise on the forums or use word of mouth. If you yell outside a starport please don't do it tons!

If you are wanting master level entertainers then what you get is a "social" player. Sostanding in an empty cantina with no interaction really wont be much fun. My experience is that credits arent going to entice them, if there is noone to interact with.

If you are wanting below master level entertainers , then you also have a problem since the exp is going to be quite low, if noone is around to heal or group with.

So what you almost need to do, is offer something else, besides just credits. Maybe to go along on guild hunts, or some other activity that will offer a better experience in game play in addition to just entertaining.

Or maybe, just have entertainers on "call". Come when needed might be a solution.

Not only is afk entertaining part of the problem, there is also an interaction issue and only a very busy city will provide the interaction that most entertainers seek, and unfortunately , a lot of the newer players are programmed by the afk crowd to run into a cantina,,listen/watch, go afk, be healed and leave without saying anything at all and they usually dont tip either. Its why its hard to find a true long term entertainer in the first place.

I like going out on hunts, sometimes they are the most fun I've had in a while. My guild made me cut my teeth in group hunting with them on dathomir, I was so sure I was gonna die, but I even poked at the NS elder a bit too (A whole 30 points of ddamage per hit until I upgraded from my random dancing dagger)

I go into PC cantinas mostly to see how they are decorated, because no one is usually in the town, no one in town means no one to heal or interact with, and I won't stand there for 6 hours bored out of my mind.

One reason I see there being no people in town is because people are so intent on having their wn city that we wnd up with 60 sub par cities and no metropolises, instead of just merging with another city. But then again, since most people would go to the cool POI's to kill things, being in a city where there's nothing fun to kill.... why would a person go aaaaaaallll the way back to their city to be healed?

It's a hard thing to figure out how to keep the PC cantinas busy... Player events help but it seems to me that the BEST way to get healing for your party is to find an entertainer you like and get along with and have them come on hunts with you.

• In order to get healing XP you must be in population centers


• In order to have any fun as an entertainer you must be in populated areas


• Most player cities do not have much traffic at all


• The global building registration system is borked, otherwise it would be easier for player city traffic to know whether stopping by the cantina is even worth the effort.


• AFK entertaining is generally the only type of entertaining you're ever going to find in player cities, because of the lack of traffic. Unless someone is doing homework and only bothers to get back to the game when someone is there, they are going to be very bored in an empty cantina.