Dancer Archive

The designers are working on ways to make AFK entertaining less desirable. I'm not sure where they are in the process.

In the meantime, I agree with most of the posters here. Don't tip AFK entertainers. If you have a choice, watch/listen to a non-AFK entertainer instead of an AFK one. Whenever possible try to role play with Entertainers. It keeps you both engaged and is a good way to learn about local news/legends.

The true purpose of a cantina is a meeting place where you will more than likely run into other players and learn from them or start groups with them.

Kevin "Q-3PO" O'Hara

SWG Community Relations Manager

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KaptainKrude wrote:

Has there been any discussion or proposed solutions to the AFK macro looting going on at static "containers" in dungeons?

And should this be /reported when encountered?

Thanks!

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Its something they are working on, but I dont know the details atm.I know its something that they want to address.

Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl

Assistant Community Manager

7.Do you feel that it is acceptable that the role of entertainers is being completely filled by people impersonating NPCs, leaving those who play the class with nothing to do? Do you plan to do anything about this, such as an auto-logout or making healing a more active process?

We understand the nature of this issue.In essence, we can’t prevent AFK people from playing, but one thing we are doing is looking at different ways we can encourage at-the-keyboard play.

(And I know this will come up again, so here is why we can’t prevent people from AFK.Given that this is an online game, there are people out there who are very smart and will learn how to play AFK no matter what we do.It is just the nature of the beast.So instead of keep it so that only high-end computer savvy people can AFK, we make it fair so everyone can do it instead of just an elite few.)

We feel that AFK macroers are not healthy for the game. We want it to stop as soon as we can. And yes, we are aware that we are the ones that put the system in place. This was not what we intended, but things have evolved to this point.

JustG

If you get a badge, you'll know it. Trust me, you'll know...unless you're AFK, then it will be a surprise.

Pex (I thought this one was sort of funny)

Q: In these days the Jedi job is killing the game... not because there are too many of them, but because of *how" you become a jedi. To become a jedi you have to be master in 5 random jobs, and as a direct result lot of people begin to master all the jobs, and this system kills the guilds, so you have people XPing all day long, abandoning every concept behind a RPG game, neglecting your guild... Eventually, the game would have been more interesting *without* the ability to become a jedi... please, give new rules to the universe because this system is killing SWG...

A: We agree that the Jedi-qualification system needs a revamp. An unforeseen side effect of our current Jedi Holocron system is "Holocron grinding" during which players do whatever they can to gain XP in professions, including using Macros and being AFK. We don't like the fact that, when you enter a cantina, some of the entertainers might be AFK for long stretches. We're actively redesigning both the Jedi progression (i.e., how you advance as a Jedi, what you gain, etc.) and the Jedi qualification system (i.e., how you become Force Sensitive). The new system will hopefully resolve most of these issues.

1.When the entertainer class was created, what was the vision for role that entertainers would play in the grand scheme of things? Do you see entertainers now as filling that role?

Along with everything that TH cited, the Entertainer was, at its heart, meant to appeal to the socializers in the game. Our goal was to provide a profession that allowed them to enjoy their preferred gameplay style while still providing a valuable role to the other players. Basically, we wanted to make them feel like they were contributing to the online community even while just hanging out and chatting. To that end, we made them part of the healing cycle. I do think we achieved our goal here; most of the Entertainers I know were drawn to the profession because of its very social nature and they enjoy meeting all the other players who must come to them for BF healing.

We also hoped that, by driving other players to the Entertainers in cantinas, cantinas would become social hubs where players enjoy some downtime, swapping stories and meeting one another. Although we do realize that the Holocron-grinding has led to quite a few AFK Entertainers (something we're hoping to remedy with the revision to the Jedi system), I also believe that the cantinas have become the social hubs that we had hoped for.

Shug_Ninx

I made a design decision to disallow Image Designers from migrating their own stats to preserve the social environment of this game and ensure the Image Designer profession can't be reduced in value and damage the appeal of the profession much like AFK macroing has done to Dancers and Musicians.

SWG-Runesabre

Why not disable the ability to macro sampling ?

Because people will simply move to external macro programs instead.

Until you take /sample out of the macro command list people will just keep changing their macros to keep sampling while they sleep or work or do other things crowding the server and keeping people who really want to play from being able to logon to the server.

This is exactly why we want to break the /sample macro cycle (and for that matter, the dancing macro cycle).

there is absolutely no reason to be at your keyboard while sampling since it is a totally non-interactive process.Once you kneel down there is nothing you can do as a player to improve or hinder the results of your activity.

The goal is to make it an interactive process.

Sampling was not HURTING anyone. It was HELPING Artisans to obtain all the materials they needed to get started. There are game bugs that are HURTING everybody, directly or indirectly - server stability, factory bugs, resource shift bugs, just to name a few. Fix those first, then start working on something you THINK is an issue.

Sampling AFK is definitely hurting people. It keeps people out of Starsider, for example, because those AFK folks are taking up online space. It helps flood the market with resources. It pushes those willing to do it well ahead of those who don't do it, thereby closing markets to them. It forces everyone to do it in order to compete.

What about the sampling?

AFK sampling was all the rage, because it was easier and more efficient than running a harvester.

Sampling was kinda dull, which led to people wanting to automate it anyway.

So we added in more events while you sample, so that sampling is more interesting; and we adjusted the sampling rates overall so that the harvesters are preferable for anyone who is seeking to generate tons of materials.

The intent behind the sampling changes is to make harvesters more desirable for the types that choose to AFK macro. The fact that we have AFk macroes using /sample at all is clearly wrong, since all those people should be using harvesters instead--the harvesters need to be more advantageous than the AFK macro.

The other sampling changes are for a twofold purpose: yes, they hurt the AFK macroers, but they are also intended to make the process of sampling more interesting for people who are actually sampling at their keyboards. The critical events are not all failures, there's good ones in there too.

Holocron

What Does any of this mean ? As far as I can tell... They don't like AFK... They have gone to great lengths to fix AFK problems with other Profs... and they expect the hologrind to fix our afk problems. So we have what 2 months before the grind ends... and then another 2 at least before they figure out it didn't fix it ?