Entertainer Archive
Thread: Eh, it never ends :(
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=723231&view=by_date_ascending&page=1
Sorry, can't make a click link in this forum.
Polychrome wrote:
I will admit to doing AFK dancing, but mostly because I can't always be at the puter screen. I do entertaining for fun, and am only mastering it for the purpose of dumping it again. When I'm done I'll probably take up medic or something. It's more like a hobby.
People just don't get it.
One of the coolest things about this game is how diverse our character skills can be. Unfortunately that same thing that's so great is so harmful for the entertainer profession. It's just too easy to leave a bot to gain entertainer skills, whether you really wantthe skills or not. For far too many it's just making progress with your character for the sake of making progress at something, anything. Even if it's not something you're truly interested in. And it doesn't matter a lick! Cuz as soon as those entertainer skills become pesky you just drop them and make room for the skill you really wanted all along.
I know it's hard for a lot of folks to only have one character per account, per server. If it weren't for that I'd wish to really push for entertainer skills being a detriment to fighting skills and vice versa. I know that's asking for a whole different game. But I can't helpbut feel that the entertainer profession would be much better off if it were expanded enough so that mastering itfully took up even more skill points than it does now.The entertainment field isn't without possiblities for expanding, in my opinion. Lights and specialeffects, being able to cast them on others in the group,could be a wholepage of skills on it's own with some added content.I'd work onmastering that in a heartbeat if I could.
Iguess it's not really a solution. It might have worked if being an entertainer/fighter was a bad combo' right from the start. ButI'm sure at this pointthere are LOTS of folks who play alive entertainer part of the time and go off andhavea lot of fun blasting stuff the other half of the time. My guess is there would be a big uproar from folks if there were achangethe likes of what I'm talking about.I can understand that.I wish I had room forfighting skillsalong with music andimage design myself.Still, Ican't help but wonder what the entertainer profession would have beenlike ifbeing sort of an entertainer made beinga fighter less effective. And this whole element we have now of, "I'll do this entertainer afk botthing until I run out of skill points.",with whatever the motivation behind it is,would be gone.
It's all very discouraging and disheartening, Denisa. I hear ya.
As you know, Denisa, I try to stay by the computer and greet everyone who comes in and thank any and all who listen to my music. Only time I stray is to grab acoke or check on laundry or whatever housework comes up. Last night though, I fell asleep at the comp to wake up in the morning to see my guy just standing in the cantina afk, so I was inadvertantly guilty of it. Now I have a very sore neck here at work! I do not use a macro to restart my dancing for the reason you stated above though. I macro my flouries only. So if my flourish macro runs me out of action because I am afk, I stop everything PERIOD. I do not like the macro that makes it so you will start dancing or playing again as soon as you get back enough action to start up. Too much like cheating and when I make master, I will feel a lot more satisfied then the ones who macro'd there way there while watching reruns of Seinfeld.
I started this game 4 days ago, and I have only done the Entertainer thus far. I am wondering if there are any suggestions as to what would be a good balancing profession for me to go out into the world a little more. I plan on travelling to different worlds to play at their cantinas, but I need to play in Tatooine and /grin & /wink my way to more tips to get the payroll to do such!
Well, I am just at work bored, so I will sign off here.
Raideo - Master of Nothing
Oh, and I NEVER ask for tips, if someone wishes to tip me, it comes as a surprise and I thank whoever was kind enough to do so...
So far, players have been very kind to me, I have been donated a nice suit to jam in, and have had instruments made for me as I progress through my skill tree. I am getting by just fine without te need to beg for tips. I am sure there is more to the game that I am missing out on right now, but I wil find that out as I progress more.
Raideo - Master of Nothing...
So...that purple suit was a gift, I was in the cantina when you were talking to the tailor and I'm glad you picked purple, I have 2 or 3 outfits to match that but by now you allready know what my favorite is
Anyway, the problem isn't being AFK for 5 minutes and you know by now what I do when I HAVE to go AFK for a few minutes, the problem is people such as Shak'It, he is beyond any doubt the worst AFK'er I've seen or read about. His guild hall is just right outside Mos Eisley but he has to park himself in the cantina and what was worse was he brought guild members, another AFK tainer and a AFK medic that healed him for hours on end, I know because I saw it happen while I was resting my own action bar back up getting severely frustrated seeing a AFK doc heal a AFK bot and seeing people run in and out while I was still resting my action up.
It's people like that that are the cause of why you got that big tip that I rejected because he had to insult me with his 38 credits AFK test when I was talking to Shak'it in spacial chat, HAHA, the irony of it.
Well, I ran the healing droid out of the cantina after trying to explain to him that I had to work around him for over 15 hours, that I'll no longer teach him because he's never there to teach me so I end up paying for skills, only fair he pays as well, no ? His guildmate also ran off after I told him I'd only invite him if he stayed at keyboard, he obviously didn't like that or he wouldn't have run out the cantina in such a rush calling me a entertainer with attitude, well sorry but their guild cost me tons of xp, I got tons of crap from customers about the healing droid right in front of the stairs and I probably missed alot of tips having that droid in my regular cantina.
All in all it was a nice weekend, we ran out the bots and at times we kept the place pretty packed with customers while we were jamming, most didn't even need healing or stayed alot longer then they needed to, perhaps that means we put on a nice show ?
Oh if you can play the Kloo Horn then give me a shout, I'll make you one
While there are a few "xp is their reward" posts in the following thread, take heart in the numerous posts where people seriously take into consideration the amount they tip. Many discuss what determines the amount of their tip and their disdain for AFK'ers. Several also mention that entertainers make the game more interesting and fun for them. So, take heart and go read!
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=725853
Although Bestine was very busy I only got tips the first hour I was there then it just ran dry even though the cantina was very busy and I kept healing people upto the moment I left. Bestine is not for me, constant fighting in the cantina and massive lag coupled with the few tippers decided that it wasn't for me to stay around there.
Funny to read some of the posts that talk about tipping based on the title and skills of the entertainer, hehe, I turn off my title to not draw all the attention to me when there are other entertainers around.
I'm starting to wonder if I'm getting the game at all. Apparently the game is grind your way to master dump and repeat. Are you prepared for everyone whose holocronsays become master musician, become master dancer. An afker is born.....
-Sen
*very confused by the master commando doing formal next to me*
MoonLilly wrote:People just don't get it.
One of the coolest things about this game is how diverse our character skills can be. Unfortunately that same thing that's so great is so harmful for the entertainer profession. It's just too easy to leave a bot to gain entertainer skills, whether you really wantthe skills or not. For far too many it's just making progress with your character for the sake of making progress at something, anything. Even if it's not something you're truly interested in. And it doesn't matter a lick! Cuz as soon as those entertainer skills become pesky you just drop them and make room for the skill you really wanted all along.
I think the problem with SWG, more than anything else, is that people do not get the game at all. The character creation/development model is just completely, totally unlike anything they have ever seen before, and most players don't even stop long enough to think about it and realize that this is so. They are so used to picking ONE profession and just levelling it to max, that they have no idea how to deal with a "free-form" game where you can mix-and-match skill points, migrate stats, and basically "do just about anything you want." Many players confuse "you can do anything" with "you should do everything", and because there is no limit to how often or how many skills you can try and surrender, and because there are so few "levels" to mastering a profession (relative to, say, a game like EQ), they're just all over the place.
I think to some extent this is why people AFK Macro dancer and musician and so on as well. They do it because they can. By this I don't mean that it's allowed, but rather that, allowed or not, it's doable in a not entirely unreasonable time frame. If you try to park yourself in Moenia where the plasma thieves respawn over and over again and effectively "macro" your way to master pistoleer it's never going to happen -- because the respawn rate is so slow it will take months. But if you park yourself in a cantina and cleverly time your macros and do smart things like taking novice medic and a few levels of pharm/chem so you can stimpack yourself, with a few hours of actual work at keyboard and some cleverness with macros you can master Dance or Music in a few weeks. The "because they can" here is thus that it is possible in a short time period. And that they still do not GET the game.
See, in most other games, starting with D&D and going on to UO, EQ, DAOC, AO, AC, and literally almost every other game you can think of with the exception of the obscure PnP game "Champions", the whole goal of playing (unless you are a hardcore RPer) is to "finish" the character -- to "get to the end" of it by getting to the maxium allowable/attainable level. In old D&D this was 36th level (for humans and certain demi humans only). In Rolemaster and newer D&D this was 20th level. In EQ it was 50 and later 65. In AO it's 200 but levelling is faster than in EQ, so it's probably similar over all... and so on. When people play these games, particularly in PnP, they get their character to the end and then "retire" him and start over. But it takes FOREVER to get to the end... Ever try getting to 65th level in EQ? I never played EQ but I know someone who played it like a nutter for nine months and only got to like 54th level. Or in D&D, we had a campaign once that lasted two real years of our lives and we ended it at 19th level, basically concluding that 36th level was "unattainable."
In games like this the character is never finished (or not in a reasonable period of time), and so you have more to keep "working for."
But SWG is different. It's not about working hard to get to the end, because getting to the end is easy -- relative to those other games where levelling gets so progressively long at the end that nobody sane ever gets there (I never met a SANE person who got a PC in old style D&D to 36th level -- not without cheating and giving himself 35 levels for free or something). So SWG is about other things -- roleplaying, socializing, player economy, guilds, quests, exporation, etc, etc. Whatever those other things may be, "getting to the end of the character" is really not what the game is about, but people are still playing it as if it is.
So this is the problem. The old games taught the play style of "do everything you can to gain xp as fast as possible because getting to the end takes forever and a day," and people got into that mode of thinking. Now SWG comes along with its "you can master even if you are a casual gamer so you don't HAVE to gain xp like a nutter to have fun", but people don't realize that, and so they keep going bonkers with trying to gain XP -- never thinking what they will do when they get to the end because, honestly, most of them never GOT to the actual end of a roleplaying game character before (a few nutters aside).
So, they "powerlevel" to "the end" and find out... "Uh, hey... there's nothing to do up here!" Or at least, "There's nothing any BETTER to do up here than there was all the way down there at novice." They don't realize that, duh, yeah, that's the point... that's WHY they said it was enjoyable by casual gamers (unlike many other games like this).
The only real way to fix this problem is that the gamers playing SWG need to follow Yoda's advice, and unlearn what they have learned about RPGs... They have to realize that this game follows a totally new paradigm, and that, to really get the most out of it, they have to develop a new play-style -- the "SWG" playstyle -- that is more focused around what this thing does WELL, rather than around the one thing it doesn't do at all (have room for tons of power level gaining).
Think I'm wrong? Go take a look at the main boards here. They are FILLED with whining crybabies griping about the "lack of conent" particularly for the "endgame." That's because theya re still trying to play this NEW system the OLD way.
There's hope though, and it's this. Gamers are, on the whole, a good deal SMARTER than the average person. They learn game systems and learn them well. Eventually, they will start to "get" this game, and when they do, they will have a lot more fun.
Now... there will always be AFKers as long as it is "allowed" because, again, it's doable to macro up to the top in a short period of time. What we have to hope is that the relative proportion of them drops as people start to really "grok" SWG's new gaming paradigm. After all, while a few people might keep mastering and selling back, and mastering and selling back, I can't believe most people will. MOST of them will master ONCE, and then drop the skills to master something else, and never go back. So they'll do their AFK Macroing and be gone, and hopefully will have learned their lesson enough not to do it again.
We just have to grit our teeth and wait them out, I guess.
C
And Sendari is right, this whole Holocron thing is going to be the entertainers worst nightmare, AFK tainers galore
DenisaGalen wrote:
And Sendari is right, this whole Holocron thing is going to be the entertainers worst nightmare, AFK tainers galore
That's why I give up. After seeing CSR-Jeassa (I hope I spelled that right) say that AFK Macro'ing was A-OK in SWG, I realized that it was "Game Over" for me. My entertainer will gracefully bow out, re-distribute all the points, and go combat all the way. Not that it matters anyway. When I first started playing this game the cantinas were the place to be; always had entertainers and nearly always had customers. People seemed to be more pleasant on the whole and a few even seemed surprised that they had spent so much time in there when all they meant to do was jump in, heal, and jump out.
The scene is over, so my time spent in cantinas will be to heal by bf for free from a dancing droid and go about my business.
AFK macro'ing doesn't hurt anybody. Nope, not a bit.
DenisaGalen wrote:
Excellent post Chessack and just so you know, I used to play a few combat games, I loved Diablo for instance, I think it took me a week to get past that guy with the meat cleaver.
LOL! Yeah that guy gave my poor rogue nightmares too...
I don't think this is about combat vs. non-combat though, although the various gaming types do tend to lean in those directions. It's about linear, level-based games vs. more free form games.
In a linear level-based game such as D&D, EQ, DAOC, or Diablo, when you cut out all the baloney, when you get right down to it, levelling is the whole point of the game. Everything else is (to most players) "window dressing."
In a free form game such as Champions or now SWG, levelling is not at all what the game is about -- it's about pretty much everything BUT levelling.
The problem is that the vastly most popular games of all time are linear/level-based games (D&D, EQ), and thus 99% of gamers have been "trained" to think in a linear, level-based way. Heck, there is even a post on my forum where the guy said basically, "What have I learned from SWG? That to have a good MMORPG, you need spells, swords, and levels." This guy is still "stuck" in linear, level-based mode.
There's nothing wrong with that mode per se, and lots of games use it. But SWG is not one of those games, and so to enjoy it you really need to bounce yourself out of "linear levelling" mode and become more "free form" in your thinking. Note, this is not an easy transition, and is harder for people now, after some of them have had 20 years of such games since the early D&D days, as it was for my game group (and it was HARD for us) after only a year or so of D&D.
AFK Macroing is a direct result of people trying to play SWG the "linear level-based" way. It's really got nothing to do with combat vs. non-combat. The reason it seems that way is that the combat roles tend to be linear -- get a mission, go to a waypoint, do the job, return, etc -- and so they attract the more linear-minded players, while non-combat roles such as medic or entertainer are more "free form" and so attract the more free-form minded players. For example... I know about 5 entertainers and 1 medic who have had some exposure to the game Champions -- the most free-form game probably ever made, at least as an RPG. I have never met a combat specialist in SWG who has ever heard of Champions, let alone played it.
C