Entertainer Archive

Poll time.

Of all of the various issues we see here daily, which two would you pick to talk about if you ran into Holocron and Q3PO at the bus stop and had three minutes to talk to them about your profession?

I'll tell you up front that developers are NOT in control of how other players reward you, so I'll find tipping to be much less interesting thanresponses that deal with monetary rewards in more general terms. I'm adamantly opposed to measures designed to force players to tip entertainers or not get healed. Doesn't mean you can't complain that it should be that way, but you should know about my own biases ahead of time.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Image Design: There are not enough new things for each species when you get a new box. You can't do Mon Cals until you get two boxes...

Musicianship: Only two instruments really. Nice songs, but it's terrible that you have to play Star Wars 1 for so long before a new one.

Dancing: Ugly dances, ugly flourishes. Footloose is especially silly.

And of course: Missions! They don't pay well at all, and aren't any more fun than just playing without them.

1--Macrotainers

2--mission payouts are a joke. They don't even pay better based on distance: I can get a 200 credit mission at the cantina I'm standing right beside, and a 107 credit mission for the cantina 8000m away.

I think both of these issues are on the dev's plate already, but until they are fixed, those are the top issues for *entertainers* (IMO at least !) More songs/dances/flourishes seem to me to be issues for the specific profession corresponants; these two are more 'global'.

Number one issue is Master Entertainer is more a musician skill than anything else. Image designers get no real reward from this and it only duplicates some of the dances that dancers already have.

There needs to be much more of a hook for other adv. entertainerclasses to want this not just musicians who get a unique song AND instument from it.

Number two issue is no missions worthy of doing. No items worthy of questing. No missions to get new songs. (content)

140 credits for an entertainer mission?! WHY! That's rediculess. As a master musician and entertainer to only get 100-200 credits a mission is no way no how fair and obsurd if you think about it you get 8 times that for destorying a wort lair!

What are YOUR thoughts?

Entertainment missions are a joke as they stand now, i would rather take my 2 skill box 1 artisian missions for 800 and 900 credits then ever bother with a long Entertainer mission

As far as forced tiping forget it it, this profession is already resented on many of the servers that would just beat a dead horse even more

But a sign in sign out process at a cantina maning it for a hour should be given possibly in game credits by the cantina establishment

Also events like the surverys have could inturupt the afker macros from recieving said "pay from the cantina"

Been doing lots of traveling and the once busy cantinas in the "big cities" are even more empty now....... Either the entertainers gave up on making a living at entertaining or the class itself just to boring for the so called rewards or pay outs >>>>>>>>>

oh i checked out Briar Starsider Chialstre and Kuri and found many many empty cantinas that were once busy with entertainers

Classic moment , Someone yelling last night on CHialstra Bestine , first entertainer to show up dance and or play will tip 500 credits........ ( now some are getting it )

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barmaid wrote:

Been doing lots of traveling and the once busy cantinas in the "big cities" are even more empty now....... Either the entertainers gave up on making a living at entertaining or the class itself just to boring for the so called rewards or pay outs >>>>>>>>>

oh i checked out Briar Starsider Chialstre and Kuri and found many many empty cantinas that were once busy with entertainers

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I think it might be a bit early to judge the "empty cantina" syndrome. In my home cantina on Bria/Dearic we went through a dry spell recently. This coincided with the advancement of many locals to elite status and with my own interest in taking up the mining profession. I've seen this on the forums as well. Dancers taking a break to learn Teras Kasi, Musicians leaving the cantina to become pistoleers. Not to mention normal "churn" as players drop the game entirely.

I don't think it's a statement on boredom or mission pay so much as a statement on player's need for variety. After three months of rarely seeing the light of day, the original crop of entertainers has expanded their activities to embrace other parts of the game. Some of them end up dropping entertainment and others split their time more-or-less equally between their old and new activities. This results in the drying up of entertainers in the cantinas. Still others establish "cantinas" of their own and effectively become business owners or partners, or itinerant performers instead of having a home base.

Now, just lately, I've seen things turning around. I first noticed it about three weeks ago. I'd show up in Dearic and there'd be one or two newbie entertainers instead of an empty cantina. Then I started seeing more newbies, and players I knew from other professions who were putting aside THEIR primary game to try something new. Now, the Dearic cantina has as many as fifteen entertainers in it during prime time. That would have been a huge party back when I first started and we thought a group of five was doing real well.There'sa local Master Musician and some dancers who are well on their way to becoming Masters.

This suggests to me that there may actually be some sort of cycle involved that is rooted around the waxing and waning of player interest in certain roles rather than in any particular game mechanic. I think that even if everyone was perfectly happy with entertainer income and had no complaints about the dances, tunes and mechanics, that you'd still see a "sine wave" in the entertainer (and any other profession's) population that rose and fell as the tides of player interest ebbed and swelled.

This is why it's hard to be a developer. You have to look at all of the things that make players unhappy (or make them ecstatic) and then ask yourself "Is that really what's causing the effects I'm seeing when I see the data available in my ivory tower data terminals?".

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crazysextractor wrote:

What are YOUR thoughts?

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I'll give an answer for this, with the caveat that my mission is to find out and report on the feelings of the profession as a whole, not to color it with my own views.

When I applied for the correspondent job, I wrote a paragraph about mission payouts as an example of how I felt that entertainers were being shoe-horned to fit into existing game systems when the game systems should be getting changed to accomodate the profession instead. When the payout nerf came awhile back (payouts were cut across the board) I counseled folks to wait, be patient, give it a chance. Nowadays, I believe that the payouts ARE too small, especially given that they don't scale with skill. This is a direct result of mission difficulty being based on risk. There's no risk in doing a cantina gig, so we get a difficulty of "zero" for our missions and that determines our payouts. The thing is, that deliveries even pay as a difficulty of five or so, yet when you take the shuttle there is zero risk in those missions also and you can do more of them in the same amount of time, potentially. Someone needs to re-evalute how the difficulty of entertainer missions is assigned and find a way to scale it with the skill level of the entertainer.

BUT, and this is a big "BUT", it has to be done in such a way that you won't have every Tom, **edit**, and Harry buying novice entertainer and macroing his way to a fortune. Trust me, if you ever played Everquest and watched people sit around and make cheese non-stop for hours for a couple of gold coins each (but a cumulative effect of thousands of plat) you'd know what I mean.

Ultimately, this isn't about mission payouts, it's about a philosophy wherein developers have to be willing to shape the game around our needs rather than hammer at us until we fit into the games pre-defined slots.

The other thing I wrote about was a pet peeve of mine - falling down. I hate it, every dancer I know hates it, and nobody on the development staff has ever come out publically and justified its existence, especially given that musicians don't get a similar "critical failure".

So, if you like, there are my "top two",though the second is really Ravenmist's territory. Given my current position,I'd be more likely to concentrate on getting Master Entertainer to better reflect the dancer and ID portions of the tree and attract people from those professions. As someone already pointed out, ME is for all intents and purposes a sub-class of musician at this point.

1. AFK macroing must be stopped.


2. AFK macroing must be stopped right now.


3. AFK macroing should have been stopped five seconds ago.

Entertainer missions. There is no bigger problem for all entertainers. Every entertainer should have the ability to earn a decent income from the use of his or her skill. Relying on the generosity of other players is not right.

1 AFK entertainer bots sucking the life out of the cantinas.

2 Making Master Ent relevant to someone other than musicians.Creation ofa compelling reason for people to want the title of ME without making it appear that it is taking something away from any of the 3 elite entertainerprofessions like it seems to do with the Mando & Ceremonial. Especially given the history of all of the entertainer restructuring at the end of beta.

So we agree then. I like you already..

I agree - macroing your way to a fortune is not what I want to see either..

Instead make these missions require you to be there. Add SOME sort of dynamic flow. Perhaps random popups that come up the more skill level you have which recommend flurishes and rests ( for musicians) and if you perform these flourishes like you are supposed to perhaps the audience ( which I think should spawn at the place you're preforming at) will tip you accordingly (NPC audience)

Just think of how cool a missions would be that asks you to gather 5 musicians and 6 dancers of a certain skillleveland take them to the theather - All the seats will be full of an audience cheering for you and your band of dancers puts on an amazing show and get paid for it accordingly (by the game). Don't you think this would even attract many players to come and watch? I do. I think we need BETTER missions that simply pay more esspecially if you have the skill level.

Maybe something like this is already in the game and I have been stuck in a cantina trying to talking to people who aren't even there.. Seriously we need more involving missions. And perhaps even some way to become a famous and well known musician - Have our names outside of the theater with a show time of some sort.

These are just some ideas. Perhaps in the wrong place..

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DaraShaku wrote:

1. AFK macroing must be stopped.


2. AFK macroing must be stopped right now.


3. AFK macroing should have been stopped five seconds ago.

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