Development Cycle Archive

Here's my thoughts on missions and beyond. One of the main issues I see with entertainers is that once mastery is achieved, there are no goals left to achieve. That is a lack of content that leads many to untrain the professions almost as soon as they achieve mastery. Others may entertain for a while until boredom catches up to them. My proposal below not only addresses missions and their rewards, but also tries in part to solve the lack of content and goals available to entertainers.

First, the new missions should satisfy certain requirements. The ones I think are important are:

• They should provide growth opportunities and things to do for entertainers to keep them active past mastery
  
• They should promote at-keyboard play.
  
• They should be rewarding
  
• They should be fun
  
• They should not require massive amounts of work by the dev team (or they'll never happen)
  

Here's my proposal:

(This proposal focuses on mission rewards and growth of the profession. I'll likely make another post on ideas about the missions themselves...how to make them fun to do)

Mission Rewards - Missions should base their rewards on the difficulty of the mission, the amount of travel involved, and the location (Lok missions should pay better than Tatooine).. Missions should pay decent cash (but not outstanding...keep in mind entertainers are supposed to be supported by other players), but the real reward should be in Fame Points (see below).

Mission rewards should take bands (groups) into account. A band receiving a mission should be rewarded more than an individual. It would be preferable if the system could only reward those who were in the group when the mission was taken to prevent abuse of the system.

Fame Points - Fame points are very similar to the Faction Points already in the game. This should minimize the risks and time requirements on the dev team since they can borrow from faction points, an already working and tested system. Most of the time would need to be spent on the rewards.

Fame points can be earned by performing missions. Fame points may then be traded in at an appropriate trainer (musician, dancer, etc) for rewards. These rewards should vary from 'neato' to 'incredible' and should take a fair amount of effort to achieve. In other words, the incredible rewards should take weeks or months of doing missions to receive. We're adding content and giving people goals to achieve, they should not be able to get all the rewards in a few weeks of play. Some suggestions for rewards are:

• Limited run clothing schematics for unique clothing that can be taken to a tailor to craft
  
• New dances/songs (in the expansion, probably...don't give them out free, make people earn them)
  
• Certification to use a new instrument
  
• Certification to use a specific dancing prop
  
• Limited run schematics for unique and cool furniture designed for use in cantinas (bar stools, light shows, etc)
  
• Ability to heal battle fatigue in high level camps
  
• Ability to enhance the mind buffs even further
  
• Ability to deliver new types of buffs (beyond just mind buffs, lots of flexibility here)
  
• Ability to buff faster
  
• Ability to target-buff more than one person at a time (up to three or so)
  
• Ability to reduce falling
  
• New titles (Rock Star, Diva, etc)
  
• Ability to advertise concerts or events
  

And so on. This is a flexible system where new rewards can be added all the time. The rewards at the beginning could be those that fit within the existing game (new clothing, faster buffing, reduced falling, etc). The others (new dances and songs, new instruments, props) can be added when they become available. Some of the rewards might also have a 'level' requirement attached so that novices do not get access to powerful abilities too early. Fame points should not be tradable.

This system awards entertainers who are at the keyboard (since one cannot macro getting missions) and provides goals for those entertainers who have achieved mastery, keeping their interest in the professions. It also spreads entertainers out to the farther worlds, since the rewards will be better out there. It is likely that those who currently AFK entertain would try to play their entertainers more to gain some of these new abilities.

Missions would be one way (probably the primary way) of getting fame points. Other ways might include theme park rewards (entertaining Jabba, for example), Event Coordinator giveaways for good entertainment, etc. Anything that requires at-keyboard play. Fame points should never be received through AFK play.

It think it would be interesting if entertainer/musician/dancer missions had a chance of spawning quest NPCs.

For example, my musician takes a gig mission to perform at the Tyrena hotel. As he's performing, a few NPCs spawn in, presumably attracted by the music. When the performance is over, some of the NPCs leave, but one sticks around. When my musician speaks to this NPC, he gets an option for a new gig mission, perhaps at a distant location.

Common rewards for these spawned missions could simply be credits, but it would be nice if, on some occasions, more interesting rewards were given. Things like those neat little quest items that players seem to love: bantha statues, rugs, new types of potted plants and other knick knacks and decorative items.

Take this a step further, and throw in rare quest spawns for the really cool things players want, like missions to dance for Jabba or other known NPCs, with commensurate rewards. Less people would be willing to go AFK and miss these kinds of spawns.

Finally, as others have mentioned, it would be nice if mission payouts scaled based on level and group size. Perhaps those rare missions mentioned above have a greater chance to spawn if you have a group of musicians/dancers working together.

Since "Image Designers" are not really Entertainers, and there is a missing entertainer (Singer). How about replacing ID with "Singer" and making a new starting profession "Visual Artist".

Visual Artist - Like the other starting professions it should have 4 trees, Hairstyling Customization, Wildlife and landscape Studies, Painting, and Sculpting.

The advance professions that this new starting profession will lead to are;

• Image Designer
  
• Requirements: Visual Artist 4-0-0-0
  
• 
  
• Painter and/or Photographer
  
• Requirements: Visual Artist 0-4-4-0
  
• 
  
• Sculptor
  
• Requirements: Visual Artist 0-4-0-4
  
• 
  
• Taxidermist
  
• Requirements: Visual Artist 0-4-0-0 and Scout 0-0-4-0

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P.S. I would think the Singer's songs would be "The SIMs" style in that you could hear the words but really can't make them out. Also I would hope there would be a ( /sing text ) command that causes your text to flot above your head like notes do, but don't Spam the text box.

PoetD --

I am going to quote parts of your post here but I could almost just say /agree poetd 100%... I'm quoting it partly to highlight a few things and partly in the (probably vain) hope that TH will actually read, digest, and understand what you are saying... because I think the majority of dedicated entertainers -- people who play the class because they love it and it is their favorite thing to do in the game -- agree with you.

Here goes...

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PoetDancer wrote:

Being an entertainer since June and knowing many others who play the profession, I have to say, quite honestly, that the true draw of this profession is not the acquisition of loot or the completion of quests.

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That was my very first thought upon reading this "in concept" thread. Yes "quests" are one of 5 issues submitted to the developers months ago by dancers, and probably one by the musicians. But there are 4 others for each class (8 total) that have nothing to do with quests, and if those other issues are not addressed I don't think "better quests with better cewl lewt" are going to do a thing to improve the profession.

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PoetDancer wrote:

When we want to do quests, we simply do the quests that are already available, and many entertainers are also fine combatatnts in their own right.

Indeed, I would question the wisdom of any move that would take us out of the venues for any length of time in order to achieve some kind of prize. What I think needs to be said is that we LIKE the cantinas, the hotels, and the performance venues; and we truly like showing off our social skills to our patrons. It is how we enjoy the game.

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I think this cannot be emphasized enough. Shug_nix and Holo have both gone on record now saying that the Entertainer classes were deliberately designed for socializer type players (on the Bartle scale). Socializers do not need loot. Most Dancers and Musicians I know just want a nice group of other performers to perform with, and a reasonably attentive audience to perform for. The unrest amongst the dedicated performers at the moment stems from the fact that, due in large part to hologrinding and such, at the moment we generally have neither, or if we have either (let alone both) we have to work very, very hard to get it. The feeling is (correctly so) that we should have those things (some people to perform for, and with) by default, and we remember quite well the first few months after launch when we did have those things.

The number one priority of the development team for entertainers should be figuring out how to get those things back to the default condition. In other words you guys need to grasp the fact that the cantina is an unattended-macro or empty wasteland, that the socializers are not able to socialize, and that they will leave the game if something is not done, and then figure out how to fix that. I fail to see how quests for NPCs and "kewl lewt" are going to make any progress on this issue whatsoever. It only encourages people who are NOT social -- people who's only goal is progress and loot -- to play the socializers' profession, which will even futher marginalize and frustrate the already-shrinking, increasingly-frustrated group of socializers who are still around. Holocron himself has said, and I quote, "I wince whenever I hear about people grinding entertainer. They are playing a socializing profession as an achiever." Clearly HIS intent was not to make the entertainment classes "achievement" classes. Yet if the profession becomes all about questing and missions and loot, that is exactly what it becomes.

I never played a MMORPG before SWG because I am a socializer. No game ever existed that allowed me to play as such. No class ever supported that playstyle. Then SWG came along with four whole professions devoted to it, and for a little while I was in socializing RPer heaven. I'm still able to enjoy the game because I found some good social people and we RP together, but I have to work much harder at it than I should, because the entertainment profession no longer contains (as it once did) a very large proportion of socializers.

Note: I'm not saying there should be no rewarding quests. What I am saying is, if that is the only major change you are going to make to entertainers, then you are doing the socializers a dis-service and most of us will end up leaving the game. There needs to be much more done than mere quest and loot additions or the professions will not get better; rather, they will get worse, devolving further into achievement-grinding professions. Because now people won't just be grinding experience... they will be grinding quests for loot too.

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PoetDancer wrote:

I think a player on these boards said it best when he said on his first cantina visit, "what is everyone doing here?" and the answer was, "I don't know...but it sure is fun!" True to Ralph Koster's vision of player generated content, we Entertainers can invent our own fun. We needed no developer incentives to form bands, go on tour, create songs, start rumors, act the role of "damsels in distress," or be "travelling troubadors," and I don't think we need them now.

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I will disagree slightly here. The developers need to make certain things easier for us to do. For example, as you say below, registration needs to be improved. But I'll go one better than this... we need to be able to put our scheduled gigs into a "TV Guide" of sorts that is available publicly on something like a bazaar. I'd even be willing to pay for ad space. Let everyone on the server (not just the tiny proportion who read the forum here) know that Band X is playing at Location Y at Time Z and everyone is invited. Perhaps make a "cover charge" possible easily (in private venues only, not public ones), or provide us with a way to sell tickets (a la "Ticketmaster" or "Fandango"). Then troupes could station someone at the cantina door who is there to take tickets, which must be traded before you can enter. Or perhaps just do it like a merchant.... When the private cantina is set on "Ticketed Entry Only", only people who both HAVE a ticket in possession (AND are not on the ban list, to prevent griefing) can get into the cantina. The tickets could even be a crafting-type thing. They could be sold, traded, even "scalped". Sell them on the bazaar, for instance. We could make them in factory crates to sell to large "parties" of people, and so on. This would encourage entertainers to become part of the economy, give them something to make and sell, and so on... but it would be in a social context. And perhaps make it so when a "show" is being performed, everyone in the cantina watching the show gets an enhanced mind buff (say, +150% instead of +100%). This way the non-entertainers would have a great reason to go see the live show.

Now you have entertainers providing a valuable service that they can trade like a commodity, making it worth while for the people watching the show to do so, and allowing it all to happen in a way that is based in socialization and interaction with live players... not just NPCs.

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PoetDancer wrote:

I take it that this thread was started to figure out how to encourage entertainers to entertain, or what changes to the entertainment profession would make entertaining more exiting or worthwhile.

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If that is true than it is misguided. You cannot entertain a computer. It's all 1's and 0's to the server and the NPCs. They can be programmed to act as if they are entertained. They cannot really be entertained. The problem with quest/loot systems for entertainers is that it encourages them NOT to interact with other players, but rather, to interact with the NPC environment, thus turning a multiplayer expeirence into a solo one. This defeats the whole point of the class, which is to provide an outled and a role in a MMORPG for socializer type players.

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PoetDancer wrote:

Yet, I would argue that those who truly love and work hard at being entertainers can't wait to get back to the cantina, if only to show off our social and roleplay skills, and have characters reciprocate in kind. The problem is that our profession is getting mechanized into something that scaresly resembles the original intent of what an entertainer is supposed to be. It has become something thathas EVERYTHING to dowith healingBattle Fatiuge, healing mind wounds,or gaining perks or "goodies;" and absolutely NOTHING to do with being "entertaining," as I described.

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This is 110% totally spot-on. The more and more of an "achievement" profession it becomes, the less and less socializers want to play it, and the less "entertaining" it is.

Several arguments are arrayed in favor of what has been going on, both of which are false or at best misguided.

Argument #1 -- "Achievers have a right to play the profession too." Well, sure they do, but they don't have a right to expect it to be an achievement-based profession. Let's face it, they already have TONS of other professions in the game that they can use to slake their achievement-based thirst. They can grind every crafting profession to the top. They can grind combat. They can grind CH and so forth. Out of 33 professions in the game, I don't think it is a crime or violating anyone's gaming rights to make just 3 of them (less than 10% of the total) be non-achievement professions. The achievers have 30 other professions to choose from. Play one of those.

Argument #2 -- "The non-entertainer players (i.e. mostly combatants) don't find your routines and skill animations the least bit entertaining anyway and don't like watching you. They consider it forced down time and would rather it was taken out of the game." Many say this but my experience gives the lie to it. We just started a new dance/music group in our player town (the "New Deeja Delites"). The first night the 9 of us met, we discussed how to run things for a while and then just "Jammed". The routines weren't even well organized but we did use /bandflo. We ended up with an audience of most of the rest of the town, people cheering and applauding, and folks showing up on the shuttle because friends were sending them /tells saying, "You have to get in here and see this -- a group entertainers actually entertaining!" That these veteran players (most of whom had been playing since launch) were wowed by the simple expedient of the occasional /bandflo says a LOT about the lack of true entertainment. The reason non-entertainers don't like to watch us is because most of us are not entertaining. If things were done to encourage REAL entertaining (bandflourishes, writing of real songs rather than just random musical notes, co-ordination of dances to music -- in other words, performances) I think the other types of players would have a lot more respect for us. One guy, a Master Ranger/Master Carbineer, keeps track of our practice times and purposely shows up to our practices. Why? "Even your practices are the best show on the server." Also, by watching us doing the same things over and over to get our routines perfect, he has also said things like, "Wow, your profession is even harder than mine when you do it right. I never would've thought that." However the key phrase he spoke was when you do it right. So I don't buy the argument that none of the non-entertainers would want to see a real performance. Many of them would... but entertainers are not giving it to them because so much of the reward structure of the game is based on NOT giving a performance but just repetitively grinding through the profession.

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PoetDancer wrote:

And herein lies the crux of the problem. We have individuals in this game who are pursuing entertainment careers, not because they like entertaining as the developers intended, but rather, to get some kind of goodie by being and mastering an entertainment class. This is at the ROOT of the problem with our profession. When players have to master a class because the holocron told them to do so, or to get a cantina for their city, or to act like a "buffbot" for their player association, they care ONLY for gaining the master's title, and not to play the role in the way the developers intended. I repeat, the problems with this profession is NOT LACK OF DEVELOPMENT, but ratherA LACK OF RESPECT TO WHAT ENTERTAINERS DOby attaching things to the entertainmet professions that have very little to do with being entertaining, and everything to do with acquiring an advantage or a "goodie."

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Nail hit squarely on the head.

Again... the profession is being played as if it were an achievement profession, and the rewards act as if it is also. Quests and loot will only make this worse.

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PoetDancer wrote:

Here is a reason individuals in our profession dance or play unattended. It is not, I repeat, NOT because there is nothing to do. Its because the things that we do are not fun for them. They want goodies like jedis, cantinas, a self-sufficient PA, or a city that can guarantee round the clock service. All other things considered, they would not even bother with being this class, except that there are reasons to do this class that have nothing to do with the developer's original intent.

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I quote this because it bears repeating and repeating until someone in the admin structure of this game GETS it. This is an excellent point.

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PoetDancer wrote:

Make cantina placement requirements different. Make it so one only needs to be a novice entertainer to place a cantina. That way, guilds and cities don't have to persuade someone that wouldn't ordinarily want to dance or play into a dancing or playing career. Cities and PAs want cantinas, and we have to assume that they will get them with or without following the developer's intent regarding entertainment.

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I agree with this also. Just let anyone place cantinas. They want the venue, not the Master Dancer. Let 'em have it. I am all for this as a change. In fact it'd probably make things better. Now instead of forcing a gulid member to grind up and place a guild (and then since he's a master sit there AFK macroing 24/7 to heal) the guild would have an incentive to contract with an existing entertainer to come perform in their existing venue. And it wouldn't take up the entertainer's valuable lots.

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PoetDancer wrote:

While this is a difficult concept to really grasp in tangible terms, I can only ask that a system be in place that is easy to access and implement while we are performing so that we don't have to constantly sit at the clock to know when the procedure is completed, because I'll tell you, entertainers that simply want the buffuing ability do not care about entertaining at all, and only care about "the goodie" of buffing.

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If you make buffing variable in some way, so that the performer has a buffing meter and has to watch it in order to properly buff (i.e. if you buff too long or too short it's not going to "take", and the length of time is some amount +/- a random normal variate), then it could not be AFKed and this would give people a reason to be "live" as performers. For example, let's say it takes 8 minutes. Instead of 8 minutes, give us a "buffing meter" and make it take 8 minutes +/- 2 minutes. So you start buffing, and the meter starts to go up. The first time, it maybe hits "full" at 7 minutes. If you don't STOP the buff within 30 seconds, it doesn't take right and it's as if you went half the time instead of full time. Dancers would need to be able to SEE this meter. Also, we would need a /stopbuff command (or similar). In fact we need that anyway, since a lot of people do not realize they have to /stopwatch, and /stopwatch can be buggy in any case. Give us a /stopperf or something so WE can control it, give us a meter, and make it variable upon each buffing instance, and it would be impossible to AFK it, all without harming the macroing system or AFKing system in any other way.

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PoetDancer wrote:

Unencumber the /registration system and make it more useful. Right now, we have a system that does not promote the equal distribution of entertainment resources on the servers. One or two cities have more entertainers than they know what to do with, and other cities haven't seen an entertainer in weeks, save the occasionl unattended buffbot dragged along to help somebody's PA. Registration suffers from some major problems in that a registered player in a cantina who logs off imprints the cantina with a perpetual sun icon that gives players the false impression that the cantina is manned.

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Let anyone register at any venue, but I would add another wrinkle. Make it so that you (a) get more experience (slightly) when registered than not, and (b) only X number of entertainers (say, 5 or 6) can /register at any cantina before the registry becomes "full." Now you have a reason for people to go to other venues... they can get more XP if they register in Keren than sitting around un-registered in Theed. This would spread out the entertainer base to more and more places. Make it so a group of, say, 6 fully registered performers is as valuable (xp-wise) as a group of 20 un-registered ones. This would encourage grouping but smaller groups rather than 20-person Theed cesspools of non-performers such as we have now.

By and large, I agree with Poet Dancer and I hope (probably in vain) that TH and the other people adminly types will actually read and understand all of Poet's points, because she made them exceptionally well and many of us dedicated perfomers agree with her.

Again let me stress... I am NOT opposed to making better/more interesting quests for entertainers. But I worry that if this is the only one of our issues to be addressed, without addressing the others (which are largely social/aesthetic in nature), it is going to make the profession more achievey/grindy/anti-social than it has already become. The quest system needs revamping as part of a larger scheme that has as its other elements features that strogly encourage live, co-ordinated performances -- i.e true entertainment. Without that, you're just making entertainment yet another grind profession.

C

These mission ideas would be for dancer but should work for musicians as well.

Create an actual party that you are to entertain at thecantina, i.e. when you take the mission a table full of mercenaries shows up in the cantina and you have to go dance for them.

Spawn a camp or building out in the wilderness that has a bumping NPC party at that you need to go do a show at (would be fun when doing missions in groups)

Give us a contact that we meet and get a "Secret" item from, then we go back and dance in the cantina till another contact approches us to get the item. (similar to delivery but we wait around in the cantina rather than run around finding the person)

Missions to buff npcs in various locations.

Private dances for NPCs in the various buildings around a town.

Intel gathering missions. Sit/dance in a cantina spying on an NPC conversation till they say something usefull, or maybe till someone shows up in the cantina (would be cool if some of the famous people from starwars showed up, like han and chewei strole in and you get to inform jabba that they are here)

I have to get back to work. Just some ideas to get the ball rolling.

Sorry to post twice in the same thread,but i really feel I would be doing a disservice by not give a huge /AGREE to Chessack's post.

Well here is my two cents from an entertainer since day one...

First for basic missions, I think they are mostly fine if tweaked. IE the pay needs to be signifigantly increased. And more objective based. For instance... go to a theater (not the cantinas) and do a call and answer performance as a duet... Do at least 10 calls and answers w/o messing up. That makes you have to perform and perform well to get paid. I feel that having player created missions would be nice. However if the missions pay well and send you to a cantina, then people will assume were on a mission. If that happens I feel tips will drop further. (Where i used to make upwards of 40k/hr in tips I now may make 5-6k/hr and I am the most well known musician on my server) Buffs helped on tips going back up and were not factored into that pay rate.

Missions should help to provide more content and involve us more in the game. I had posted about us being information gatherers as well numorous times. I think if you use us as heralds we could offer a lot. These missions should be out of cantina ones as well. What would be nice is to "turn on" missions while playing in the cantina. At random times, NPC's would aproach you. They would whisper "hey maybe we can help eachother" or something. We run a mission for them and then learn that if you smuggle through entha today, you have a much lower chance of being scanned. Or find a bh's mark for them vs the droids. Things that while they dont have to use us, It enhances their gameplay if they do. Obviously using this for fractions would be useful as well.

Quests and loot:

I think we should have quests and loot for sure. Loot can be things that are mostly already in game.... Things like skill tapes, rare clothing (not with stat mods) Ability to craft custom colored instraments! A method to record songs for selling for a method of healing or buffing. A method to "preview" song macros so you can write songs while alone. The ability to hire or gain NPC bandmembers. That would be another way to "preview" songs. The ability to learn to craft an instrament that would affect buffs.

The third part:

Entertainers are the type of person to create player made content. Why not start indroducing things to help player events. Give those tools to entertainers. Almost every event has them there anyway. This adds another uniqueness to the proffesion in line with what they do. However, if you do this I would say to also include politicians as it is the only other class where a large group also create player created events. Things such as datadisks that can be added to a new bazar. That bazar sells these disks only or tickets to events. That way people add a datadisk to this bazar with a description of the event. People can purchase as many as they need to distribute to friends. There should be two types of disks. One is info only and treated like a wp so it can be emailed. The other is for use IN the event and is an item.

Lets look at what this does....

Many new avenues get opened to the proffesion. Those that wish to be more in the industry part of the proffesion can craft and sell items. Those wanting to role play have new tools to help with those events. Those who are achivers can go out and find new tools to achive further. The fame concept would help with achivers as well I belive. People who don't want to be involved in the spy type missions dont have to be. Players make more money doing missions and have a goal and objective to achive them; those objectives require active entertaining to make them interesting.

NPC's

as far as what npc's to include, i would like to see the gamut included for quests and such if the info gathering quests are included. In general though I want to deal with scum and viliany, soldiers and nobles.

One thing i find as a huge issue to control using only in game methods is sign ups for events. My guild, all entertainers/ medics, did over 70 gigs between november and januaray. The only in game method to track this is send a guild email out and have them email back. I would like to see a method for them to sign up. In that case a placable "agent or manager" would be nice. Customers could then come to my guild hall (house for those bands not guilded) and request and event. Once we "accept" the event, then a signup is made for it. This would be a huge headache lifted for us. In fact due to all the work and things such as that FFWB has decided not to do gigs for the month of febuary. To date we have turned down 25 gigs. A large reason for it is that those in charge of schedualing the events just don't want to deal with it this month. Its vast amounts of work especially because there are NO in game systems to suport it.

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SakeO wrote:
Ithink entertainer missions should become the way entertainers can find a reliable source of healing xp. You would show up at your gig andcontact an NPC to say you are ready to work. That wounded NPC would then begin to listen or watch you. If you mounted the terminals in cantinas, performers could look through and create performances while playing within their cantina. By having them do this, they could find the healing xp needed , but would have to be At The Keyboard to do so.

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I must beg to differ here. After spending months and months strongly opposing the AFK macrotaining behavior on the basis that it turns the performers into "NPCs", which de-values the live dancers, I cannot in good conscience support the idea of mind-wounded NPCs. This would de-value the customer. It would make it completely possible for a dancer to solo the entire profession. I think it's just fine to be able to solo other professions -- ones that are non-social by their nature for instance (e.g. scout, which is about you going out and roughing it alone in the wilderness, in a sense... and I am not knocking that profession; I had a wookiee master Scout for a while on Shadowfire). But not entertainer.

It's also not fair to other professions. We dancers have spent months arguing against the effectively NPC "AFK Heal bots." Now we ask for "Wound bots" to be wounded for us? No, it doesn't work that way. If we get to have NPC victims with wounds, then the victims with wounds get to have NPC versions of us. It is not fair to have it just work ONE way. I happen to think NPCs replacing PCs in any regard is unhealthy and undesriable in a multiplayer game. If you can just interact with NPCs all the time, why play an online game? Save the lag and go play a console game like Knights of the Old Republic.

Again I stress... The developers provided Entertainer, Musician, and Dancer as professions specifically for the people who are socializers on the Bartle scale to enjoy the game. Creating more and more means of playing the professions solo does not meet that original design theme. It turns the professions more and more into solo grind-fests.

Entertainers, Musicians, and Dancers are there for the socializers to play. Let's not find ways to make them fun for non-socializers... those folks already have 30 other professions to choose from. As primarily a socializer I would NOT request that a profession like Scout be altered to make the people playing it (who might well enjoy playing loners) socialize. Let's not have the three professions they gave us altered to make them require more "solo" play. That's not what the professions ought to be about.

C

Poet -

I have to agree with everything that you said. You said it well and I can't think of anything that you left out. I do have one and ONLY one problem with your entire post. You are on the Intrepid server.A performer of your calibre should beon the Bria server instead.

ThunderHeart, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE listen to Poet, and if necessary, beat his message into the Development team.