Doctor Archive
Thread: Doc Buff-Bots
Why is this?
Is it cause it doesn't harm our profession as much as the entertainer profession?
There has been more requirement for it since wow, eq2 and jtl?
I think they have a bad attitude about how the game should be played. They assume everyone wants to have a big, long, bubbly, undoubtedly sexually charged converstation while theyre in the cantina, while most of us just wanna get back out and kill stuff. I think its that attitude, as well as the borked ingame mechanics for mind buffing, that have caused so many entertainer bots, and such heavy use of them. It seems like theres a post about some dancer being brought to tears weekly on the boards when a buff bot takes attention away from other entertainers. With doctors, most of us are estatic to have some of the load taken off
.Message Edited by Dovakic on 12-22-2004 08:33 AM
You know what.. i didnt even think of that ..../whap self
Marrow1 wrote:
There are several reasons for the difference.
1. Doc bots are much more rare. You still have to buy the buff. As a result you still have to charge for the buff.
2. Doc bots are in out of the way places because they have to set up a entry fee on a house. You cant risk just giving doc buffs away for free to everyone.
Sorry for the long reply. Just wanted to throw my perspective in, from both worlds of this issue. Thanks for your time. Just some stuff to ponder, maybe.
Quick note: I am both a Master Doctor/TKM and Master Entertainer/Dancer/Musician on Starsider. I wanted to address some of these comments, in the interest of showing you an Entertainer's perspective. It's also a bit of a heads up - things aren't as bad for Docs, but they can get worse. Much worse. You should be thankful your buffs cost a fair amount to make/purchase, so they're usually too precious to justgive away to anyone who types /invite.
Dovakic wrote:
I honestly think that the entertainers just really like to fly themselves into a stroke over the buffbots. You go over to their boards, mention the words "bot" or "macro" youll get one-starred into oblivion. Over here, someone will help you set one up.
Some of usfreak out because we've seen countless friends leave the game in frustration over rampant use of buffbots advertising free buffs upon demand, 24 hours a day/7 days a week. Who can compete with that? How can an Entertainer, dependent on tips, get tips for a service no one wants from them any longer? Of course a Combat player will go to the Ent bot, who doesn't want reliable, dependable, 100% always there buffs upon demand?
Some of us are better than others about 1-starring. Some of us have bad days, too. We're having a rough go in the game, of late.
Personally, Itry to take into account the post count of the poster (though that's hard, as alt accounts for the explicit purpose of buffbotting would probably have a low post count). Eventually, someone who runs a buffbot posts the macro the person is looking for (usually), or the person does a search and finds all the help they need to run a robot in-game.
Nevertheless, some members of the Entertainer community frown upon them, in addition to the Correspondents, as the act of botting Entertainers basically makes the bot nothing more than the NPC band in Mos Eisley Cantina, but providing a free service with no penalty, and getting easy credits to buy expensive attachments. The same service a live Entertainer can provide. Only always available.
It also consequently makes many, many Combat players in-game treat live, ATK, actively playing Entertainers as NPC's - slapping, spitting, backhanding, licking, insulting, griefing, and such. It's not healthy for player interaction for a segment of the population to very often be assumed to be AFK and botting. And, due to SWG's constraints, if a person wants to be a jerk, they can be with no real repercussions (no required dueling, and such). This is frustrating when someone thinks they're being "cool" in front of their friends, and ruthlessly verbally assaulting the "NPC" Entertainer. Only to have a real person behind that character, wondering why they play a game that lets others abuse them.
I'm not really one to be too upset over the starring system (though sometimes it's frustrating). I find that for the most part, it reflects the perspective of the community on the subject, unless 1-star bandits attack your every post, no matter where it is. That gets really old, really fast.
I think they have a bad attitude about how the game should be played.
Yet in your very next sentence, your attitude is...
They assume everyone wants to have a big, long, bubbly, undoubtedly sexually charged converstation while theyre in the cantina, while most of us just wanna get back out and kill stuff.
I don't find this attitude to be particularly good, personally. Most Entertainers understand that they are in a support role, and want to get you back into battle ASAP. We are just as frustrated as you when buffs don't work. We want you to be happy and get your goodies fast. We, for the most part, do understand some of you aren't the chit-chat type. If you don't think that's evident to us by the first exchange of conversation, you're mistaken. We've done this for quite awhile. We get pretty good at "reading" people. At the most, if you want zero interaction, all you have to do is say, "AFK - send /tell when buff is done." Piece of cake. We understand those that don't want to talk. It lets us get something to drink and chill out a bit, too. But, what's the harm in saying "hello, what's going on?" Being friendly usually isn't seen as annoying, except in this game for some reason. That's because in this game, someone being friendly to you, who you don't know, usually means they want something from you (just my opinion on that one, strangers saying hello = annoyance sometimes).
It seems you are among the 1,000's who assume that we assume that everyone wants to have a big, long, bubbly, undoubtedly sexually charged converstation while theyre in the cantina. First, sexually charged conversation is typically NOT the norm. Dancers are not prostitutes, nor do they (for the majority, I'd assume) enjoy being treated like one. Unfortunately, many playersthink they are and treat them as such. I blame the assumed anonymous nature of the internet. And the Devs' burning desire to provide ever more skimpy clothing to females. *shrug*
I think its that attitude, as well as the borked ingame mechanics for mind buffing, that have caused so many entertainer bots, and such heavy use of them.
Personally, I think it's theperceived attitude of Entertainers that provides a safe excuse to use a buffbot and not feel badly. I think what has caused so many Entertainer bots and heavy use of them is:
1) No penalty, no cost for providing Entertainer buffs. Run your Ent buffbot for 7 days, see what tips you made. Way too easy. No loss, no cost, no risk, all gain. Always a winning combination.
2) Providing a convenient service in-game is one thing. Providing 24/7 service, for days, can never be competed with by a real person. Real people sleep, eat, go to the bathroom, and work. Oh yeah, and they live. Real life 24/7 service demands multiple shifts by real people. Bots do not. They run until the server crashes or something goes wrong with their computer.
It seems like theres a post about some dancer being brought to tears weekly on the boards when a buff bot takes attention away from other entertainers. With doctors, most of us are estatic to have some of the load taken off
That's because our bot problem is running rampant, whereas the Doctor community's bot issue is tempered due to costs involved with providingDoc buffs. Our buffs are free and identical, from player to player. There is no risk.
Now, to address why you're ecstatic to have some of the load taken off. I understand this, I'm a Master Doc on Starsider. Now, if only Entertainers HAD a load to take off. You see, since your professiondoesn't have nearly the bot problem we do, you still HAVE a load of customers and constant requests for buffs. You have a load to take off. Because most Docs buff live, you have people at every shuttlestop asking you for a buff. Entertainers can shuttle with their Master tags up till the cows come home, and will be lucky (as of late) to ever get a buff request. Why?
Well, why deal with a real person, when you can go to your favorite robot who's there everyday, all day, and does it for free? They never sleep, they're never NOT buffing. If Doc buffs cost nothing to make, and apply, and could be easily botted, and were always the same between every player, how much demand would you see in your average gaming session for your buffs? Why bother with another player when robots repeat their predictable actions and provide the same buffs that live players can do?
My advice - enjoy the attention while you can. When it's gone, you'll initially be relieved. Then you'll get worried as your bank account dwindles. Then when the bots take over, you'll understand a little better, maybe. Or you'll just quit Doctor because your buffing abilites go to waste. Oh wait - they won't go to waste. Doctors can buff themselves, so you're always useful, even to yourself, to run some missions for cash. Entertainers cannot buff themselves. Our missions pay 200 credits at most, for 10 minutes of dancing/playing music. Ouch, man. Seriously. Ponder that a bit.
I really wish I could look upon buffbots with the idea that they relieve some strain on me, due to too many customers. Instead I justlose pretty much all ofmy customers to them.
Message Edited by Dovakic on 12-22-2004 08:33 AM
I dont believe entertainers are prostitues, by any means. But when you walk into a cantina, and the first thing you see is "SomeToonWhoseNameIsObviouslyASexuallyFrustratedTeenagers flirts with Mulberry"...thats just unpleasant to me. These few ruin my attitude towards the rest of you, much like the attitude of the "l33t pvpers" ruined the attitude of the entertainer community towards the rest of tempest months back. This is when most of our buffbots got their start, but thats a long, winding, bothersome tale. So yes, my attitude towards entertainers is on the bad side, but I've never slapped, spat, or otherwise insulted any of them either. But while I was leveling my dancer alt, I damn sure got to be privy to alot of trash talk towards alot of ppl who I considered friends who the entertainers didnt think treated them properly (I dont know whether they did or not, but the point is, the insults go both ways).
My main point is that the game mechanics for entertainer buffs are completely borked. It shouldnt take 6 minutes (on average) to buff all 3 mind stats. Do you think buffbots would exist if an entertainer could buff a player as fast a doctor can? I don't. There should be some sort of consumable item for entertainers to craft, like buffpacks, or just a quick simple /applybuff, then those of us who want in and out of the cantina can go on with our business and you can go on with yours.
Message Edited by Dovakic on 12-22-2004 01:22 PM
BraindG wrote:
I am curious.
As a crafting Doc, im not all that bothered.
However, i see so many "buff-bot help", "Require Buff-Bot Macro" etc. Threads here on our Doctor Forum. However I am interested to see that there is no major uproar as there is regarding the AFK entertainer "buff-bots".
Why is this?
Is it cause it doesn't harm our profession as much as the entertainer profession?
There has been more requirement for it since wow, eq2 and jtl?
It is due simply to the fact that entertainer bots can provide service equal or even superior to that of live entertainers atzero cost. This is not true of doc bots.
Buffpacks cost. Whether you are surveying and harvesting your own resources or purchasing your packs from another med vendor, there is a not inconsiderable cost (in non-AFKable RL time, or credits) associated with doc buffing. Entertainer buffs have no required tangible item or resource requirement - the cost of an ent buff is purely based on RL time spentdoing the buff. However, given that both the Dancer and Musician professions are able to be completely AFKed (including leveling to Master), the time cost for bots is, at most, a negligible 10 seconds to get prepped and start up that buff macro. Ent bots can afford to give their service away because it costs them nothing.
Live doctors are able to provide service superior to that of a doc bot. Since doc bots cannot recharge their droids, live docs will always have the 110% droid bonus over the bot. Although doc bot macros can and are written to use bivoli, they *cannot*use havla to shorten the buffing time. Live docs, if they choose to use havla, can send a player on his way in just a few seconds. And finally, of course, the quality of doc buffs is dependent largely on the power of the buff pack, so live docs can use higher power packs to get better buffs than bots.
Contrast the situation above with entertainer bots, who give *exactly* the same base power and duration buff as live entertainers. The only thing that can change this is enhancement skill tapes, which only the bots (and their combat primary toons) are able to afford -making it more likely that bots will, in fact, give a *better* buff than a live entertainer, in the same amount of time. (Most bots already have stat migrations and macros written to buff in the shortest time possible.) In addition, very few live entertainers are masters of *both* Dance and Music - they are real people with varied interests who often choose to spend skill points in other areas. Since ent bots are nothing but "mule" toons, they have the skill points available to master both Dance and Music, making them a more attractive option to many combat players. And, of course, bots can stay online and animating 24/7,a level of availabilityno live entertainer can possibly match.
Finally, there is the issue of location and visibility. Entertainers are more or less chained to the cantinas, as they are among the few places where ent buffs can be applied. On many servers, bots already occupy most NPC cantinas and many player city cantinas, limiting the options for live entertainers. Doctors can buff anywhere as long as they have their trusty droid assistants.
Contrary to popular belief, entertainers do *not* want totrap you in the cantinaso they cantalk you to death. All they want is courtesy, respect and a viable place in the game economy.