Dancer Archive
Thread: Entertainers: Social hub for the server or yet another support role?
If we ARE a support role we need to have some restrictions removed from how our healing works. We should be able to move around and dance (or do other things like craft, fight etc.). We should be able to heal anywhere our droids are out (ala medics). We should be able go out and go where the content is like every other support profession. We should have our healing mechanic made active and targeted by us to the person who needs healing.
If we are supposed to be the social hub, if we are supposed to be IN the cantina we need to have the cantina/social elements enhanced and not taken from us or made secondary to support mechanics.
Here are a few ideas I have for enhancing social content;
- Find new ways to get us credits without us needing to be tipped. Base our income on number of players watching us and amount of healing/enhancing done. This can beome a credit sink if need be by adding a set cover charge to cantina's for player characters.
- Make our skill truly passive. Get combatants out of our groups and out of our faces demanding buffs.
- Add an official entertainer chat channel to all servers.
- NPC information (an NPC tells you, "There are storm troopers surrounding coronet. They will attack in 15 minutes." If the raid is a success you get nothing... If it is stopped you recieve faction points or a credit/item reward.)
- Dancer/Musician specific emotes
- Tough anti spam rules enforced by CSRs (it wouldn't take long for the spammers to get the hint as they faced ban and suspension)
), but I still feel pretty much the same way about this topic as I did shortly after reaching Novice Dancer for the first time. We have elements of and influences to be both, but we aren't really set up to do either full out. 
I am curious to read other people's answers though. It seems like the community is much more open minded about letting the Devs redefine us lately and mostly just want to be allowed to do our role well. It's interesting to me to see what others think that role should be. Message Edited by Esharra on 02-10-2005 05:03 PM
If AFK were dead we would work fine. It isn't really our mechanics that are hurting us it is the abusive use of AFK play that is killing not just us but large parts of this game.
LyteFoot wrote:
If AFK were dead we would work fine. It isn't really our mechanics that are hurting us it is the abusive use of AFK play that is killing not just us but large parts of this game.
Actually I disagree with you on this.
What hurts us the most and is the root cause of the buff bot problem is not that it is possible to AFK our profession.... It's the manner in which our buffs have to be delivered. Almost all of the rudeness and and anger generated towards entertainers comes from the fact that our healing works by them just walking in and /watching us or /listening to us, BUT our enhancements need us to use a command or for them to join our group. Since the majority of us who WANT to be in the cantina are there to chat, flirt or entertain people through social engineering, this type of interaction comes across as impolite. The combatants feel like we ignore them because not everyone drops out of their current conversation to instantly help the guy that just burst into the room and we feel like the combatants are rude because they burst into the room and interupt our conversationsations.
I know that some of you spend every second waiting for a new face to walk through the door and are ready to invite every single combat d00d you see... The majority of live entertainers I have interacted with since beta 3 though are talking constantly and often seem to be AFK for extended periods when they get into long private chats. Once AFK is gone this problem wil still be there. Instead of the combat guy getting rid of his buff bot he'll log it in when he and his group get ready to hunt, buff up his group then log it out again. Or, they'll let it run it's spamming /group me macro as long as the game allows before it gets bumped offline. Neither of which are going to improve things for us.
Now I know a lot of people are dead set against making buffs something that are a passive skill.... What if instead of having the /group and /setperformance methods of buffing they instead gave us a more robust home ban list style /denyservice list? One that allowed us to deny faction, guild or players and saved them so that each time we logged in we would be denying these people? This way our skill would basically be back to the point we were at before mind buffing was introduced *yet* combat players could still get a buff from watching or listening to us.
Can't we be botha social hub AND another support role?
I don't think we should close ourselves off to A or B, but rather push our professions to be both A and B. I'd like to see choices in how we're able to play Entertainers, instead of having to have it one way or the other. I want options, as I feel it will attract more people to our profession if they can play it however they like and have a choice in the matter. Cantinas should be a social hub, AND we should have the choice of leaving those 4 walls and supporting others in some way.
Else-Whira wrote:
Just kind of curious... I see more and more people talking about us being a support profession and playing their dancer that way. I thought the original design and intention for these professions was to make the cantina the social hub for the servers? Dancers and musicians being the draw to get combatants and crafters into the cantina. Battle fatigue, wound healing and enhancement being cement to ensure that the combatants and crafters would need to be there and also a way to ensure that the entertainers would be rewarded for being there themselves (they just assumed players would be willing to pay for healing.)
If we ARE a support role we need to have some restrictions removed from how our healing works. We should be able to move around and dance (or do other things like craft, fight etc.). We should be able to heal anywhere our droids are out (ala medics). We should be able go out and go where the content is like every other support profession. We should have our healing mechanic made active and targeted by us to the person who needs healing.
If we are supposed to be the social hub, if we are supposed to be IN the cantina we need to have the cantina/social elements enhanced and not taken from us or made secondary to support mechanics.
I agree that cantina elements need a SERIOUS upgrade. We need more in there to keep the customers interested, and for us to do during down time. Cantinas should be a lot more fun place to be. They are currently rather empty and stale.
Here are a few ideas I have for enhancing social content;
- Find new ways to get us credits without us needing to be tipped. Base our income on number of players watching us and amount of healing/enhancing done. This can beome a credit sink if need be by adding a set cover charge to cantina's for player characters.
If players pay a cover charge upon entering a cantina, and it's split amongst all the Entertainers, it's not technically a credit sink because the credits are going from one player to another. A credit sink would be more like the cover charge money goes poof, and no one gets it. But technicalities aside (sorry
- Make our skill truly passive. Get combatants out of our groups and out of our faces demanding buffs.
I have to disagree with this one, I think at least buffing should be activated by us through a process. Making us totally passive removes any ability by us to control who is receiving our benefits. I don't like that. I would, however, like to see another means of buffing a group without REQUIRING us to join their group. It messes up performance groups, and in general there has to be a better way. Maybe a /setperform on a group's leader buffs the whole group. Something. Hopping between groups is a pain. But, I think we should still retain an active means of buffing and not have it totally passive.
- Add an official entertainer chat channel to all servers.
It would simplify people trying to find a way to talk to Entertainers, definitely.
- NPC information (an NPC tells you, "There are storm troopers surrounding coronet. They will attack in 15 minutes." If the raid is a success you get nothing... If it is stopped you recieve faction points or a credit/item reward.)
It'd be nice to have some means of obtaining loot without having to slaughter something. Slitherhorns don't make for good weapons. And you can only dance around a gubber for so long before the bugger knocks you the *bleep* out.
- Dancer/Musician specific emotes
Yes, please.
- Tough anti spam rules enforced by CSRs (it wouldn't take long for the spammers to get the hint as they faced ban and suspension)
Hmm, I think spam is defined as saying the same thing in less than 30 seconds. I honestly think that's the best we're gonna get. I think about the only effective way to do away with spam while in a cantina for an extended period of time is to just /addignore.
Basically, I'd like to see things for Entertainers become far more versatile. I don't want anyone getting into Dancer or Musician and not being able to play in a way that makes them feel important and rewarded, or stifled by mechanics. I think we should have choices in gameplay, and for better or worse perhaps we should allow buffing outside of cantinas. Iunderstand the fear that cantinas will turn into the abandoned med centers, but honestly cantinas are far more Star-warsy than Medical Centers. I think people will still go there and relax, especially if cantinas are given a little love to contain things that are fun to do - Sabacc, gambling of various sorts, mini-games, chances to get loot, and so on. If Dancers and Musicians could put on more of a show, with new moves and stuff, it'd be even more fun - like cantina-specific options and abilities. They would be a wonderful place to throw parties even moreso than now.
If we're able to buff outside the cantina, though - we need an "Enhancer" tag or something to tell people that we're currently buffing or not. That way if we don't have the tag up, they most likely will not ask us for a buff.
Heck, even a "Buffing" and "Not Buffing" tag would get the point across.
Save that, as I've said before, I'd REALLY like to avoid any of that tag garbage, and see us get that little symbol floating over someone's head while we're actively buffing them. I really, really think this would help with random people asking "you buffing?" at inopportune times. The symbol I'm talking about is the bluish one that Doctors get while healing/buffing a patient. Ours should be green or some other color than blue. That way someone can immediately tell if an Entertainer is buffing or not. As it stands right now, we're always just sort of....there...and aside from knowing we'll heal them while we're performing, there's no indicationwhether we're actively buffing anyone or just working on a new routine, or taking a break for awhile.
Else-Whira wrote:
Now I know a lot of people are dead set against making buffs something that are a passive skill.... What if instead of having the /group and /setperformance methods of buffing they instead gave us a more robust home ban list style /denyservice list? One that allowed us to deny faction, guild or players and saved them so that each time we logged in we would be denying these people? This way our skill would basically be back to the point we were at before mind buffing was introduced *yet* combat players could still get a buff from watching or listening to us.
I would say that a robust denyservice list would be very handy, but the problem is the folks who then get pissed when they watch/listen to us and get nothing, thus knowing they're being denied the service. That would be my only concern, some d00d gets all up in arms because he spent a minute and a half watching you, but got nothing out of it.
The totally passive buff thing is kinda problematic, but I see why you're goin there. I really do. The two means of healing and buffing that we use are inherently different, in that combat people get used to just not saying a thing and watching/listening, getting their heals, and moving on. When they wants buffs, they're trained in the "no interaction" method of healing, and get pissed when they have to wait 10 seconds for someone to finish what they're saying in Group and respond.
The simple fact is that every profession demands some level of interaction with others, every support/crafting profession that is. We're no different, and I'm afraid if we ARE made different and totally passive, we'll just have nobody talking to us eventually. Just a fast-food drive-thru for heals/buffs. There'll always be those who will be chatty, but if the norm is totally passive benefit Entertainers, the level of conversation in cantinas might plummet 
Warryyr wrote:
Can't we be botha social hub AND another support role?
That's a good question, Warr, & one that I hope our correspondents can answer soon. Panthu hinted at one time that our options might end up being "either/or" but not "both". I'm hoping that is not the case but I think we should leave our minds open to that possibly being the answer we get from the devs.
As for the original arguement in this thread; I disagree that either unattended play or our active option in game mechanics are the root of our social problem when it comes to providing buffs. I think our greatest problem as buff providers is that our services can only be provided during the pre-combat preparation time-line. Remove the sense of urgency that a player feels when preparing for combat from our interactions with them and you'll effect a lot of therudeness and hostility toward entertainers as well as reduce thepopularity of buff bots.
Granted, unattended play is still our biggest problem. However, I think the greatest harm done to us by unattended play is its effect on the cantina atmosphere and (more importantly in the long term)how it skews our demographics.
Most of the people you consider rude aren't rude they are poorly trained or fed up with seeing people chatting in spacial while totally ignoring them. I've seen it hundreds of times now that with the vast majority of those a polite response that indicates you expect to be treated the same makes them act differently. They appreciate the fact that someone took the time to answer in many cases. They may not want to chat, and may not say much, but what they say and how they ask changes dramatically in most cases.
As for wanting our buffs totally passive so you don't have to interact with them or make an effort to buff, you already have the choice to not buff and ignore them. It doesn't change the fact that for those of us who enjoy that role the mechanics work fine as long as we know we don't have to compete with a robot. In fact I don't have a difficult time competing with robots I just accept that the majority of people will walk past me to the bot and compete for the ones who do enjoy a show. I try to make sure people who want buffs get them because the inability to get them when they see many entertainers in a cantina is the largest single factor in the attitude people have. I've mentioned on a couple of threads that a group of us have started playing outside the Theed cantina. The cantina is basically just full of AFK now because all the ATK went outside. This means that players are getting no response to their buff requests. I make it a point to talk to those requesting the buff and tell them that if they get no answer I will stop and come inside to buff them. That proactive action to show that there are a few entertainers still willing to fill their support roll really changes a lot of attitudes.
You think it is frustrating to see the combat players demanding services and spamming for them? Look at it from the other side where you walk into a building with 30 to 40 entertainers and you can hardly see because of all the macro spam and then you can't get an answer from any single soul in that crowd when you ask to buy the services they are supposed to be providing. They get just as frustrated as you do and we are equally at fault by not responding.
Remove AFK and you remove the rooms full of non-responsive entertainers. Then it is up to us to be repsonsive or you will see a backlash that I believe WILL remove our abilities and hand it to true NPC characters.
The issue isn't that I want to ignore everyone walking in... I am just trying to find ways for us to co-exist pleasantly. Let me do what I enjoy and let everyone else do what they enjoy and all of us get more from what we enjoy.
Is that truely so terrible?