Entertainer Archive

Mori,

1. If you dont want to listen to a SL, then don't join a group. Even groups without an official SL usually have a "leader."

2. If SL's become the only mind healers out there, as opposed to the current nerf balls that they are (1/2 of the abilities and 2/3 of the stat buffs do nothing, almost allabilities take massive mind and have a minimum 50% fail rate), you can bet that there will be a LOT more SLs out there.

In contrast, no offense to the Entertainers out there (who I depend on!), but if you want to see adventure, pick up a weapon skill as well. Any dancer or musician who can hold a pistol is welcome in my group as is- you dont need mind pool heals to be so.

I think in gameplay terms, theEntertainer is a balancedclass that works well. If you dont enjoy cantinas, it may not be for you, just aspeople may not want to be Doctors if they hate hospitals. But entertainers are essential and not under-powered, and many people enjoy playing them. SL's, on the other hand, are exceedingly nerfed and drastically need something unique to contribute to the group. Mind heal would be a great addition. If they don't get that, they really need something else huge to be worth the expense.

In roleplaying terms, lets just say that as pretty as all you twi'leks are, when a rancor is about to chew my head off a veteran squad leader's yelling would rouse me much more than a dancer shakin' her groove thang.

You can all give this post one star now. I know it wont be popular in the Entertainer forum.

Jynn Asaeba

I don't think it should go to entertainers... however, I think that whoever ends up healing mind damage should end up getting mind wounds as a result, which would warrant having an entertainer in every group.

Hmm, this looks almost like an us vs. them attitude instead of looking at what's best for the game. I do not see a good reason to allow entertainers to heal mind damage in the field. I will, however, play Devil's advocate in order to strengthen the argument. I would like to be able to heal mind damage in the field. I do not see a good reason that it should be granted to Entertainers.

1) As a class that can already heal mind wounds we already have the ability (hence training is already in place)

I can see this reasoning. However, just because wounds are in our domain does not mean that we have exclusive rights to anything related to it. One could, for instance, make the argument that Medics already heal wounds, so they already have that ability (hence training is already in place). Why should Entertainers heal any wounds when it's clearly in the role of the Medic?
The idea that everything should be grouped together is not a bad one, but it's a weak argument.

2) It would give our class the abilty to to join groups and travel with them to expierance the whole star wars galaxies instead of bieng the person that just waits by a campsite while others take a more active role...also kills the mind boggling grind of staying in the cantina. To the more social people it would also give them a wider chance to meet more people because hunting groups would say any mind healer want to join a hunt (fun times)

As for encouraging entertainers out into the field, they are able to go out there anyway. Nothing is preventing them from being of use in the field. Hanging back 65 meters and taking pop shots is a lot better than waiting at the camp, even if you only have Novice Marksman (or not at all). And if you’re one of the Entertainers that took combat skills, then you already can contribute in combat.

Pretty much, any entertainer that wants to play in the field already has the skills necessary to play in the field. I’d say the exception is the Master Entertainer/Master Dancer/Master Image Designer/etc. If you state, "This gives entertainers the ability to join groups and travel with them," then the response is pretty much going to be, "What stops them from doing that now?"

If mind damage is healable, I'd have to side with the Squad Leader. Who better to keep people rallied during an actual fight? While the drums of battle is historically correct, I think that the commanding voice of a Squad Leader is better for morale than a song.

I view the Squad Leader as the one who keeps the troops motivated while they're being shot at, such as Gen. Patton.
I view the Entertainer as the one who keeps the troops motivated as they gear up for another fight, such as Bob Hope.

Sorry, but that's just how I see it. I'd love to see Entertainers (or better yet, the advanced Musician and Dancer classes) heal Mind damage, but I cannot justify it. The better choice would have to be Squad Leader, in my mind.

Kuildeous wrote:

1) As a class that can already heal mind wounds we already have the ability (hence training is already in place)

I can see this reasoning. However, just because wounds are in our domain does not mean that we have exclusive rights to anything related to it. One could, for instance, make the argument that Medics already heal wounds, so they already have that ability (hence training is already in place). Why should Entertainers heal any wounds when it's clearly in the role of the Medic?
The idea that everything should be grouped together is not a bad one, but it's a weak argument

I disagree with your argument because me bieng a medic not an entertianer we a;ready heal a specific target area then if u want squad leader to heal mind why not just give them heal as well since they "rally" the troops. NO a squad leader makes organization between groups eiser hence the quick macro commands rally retreat so on and so forth by no means have they the abilty to heal and as far as combat class is concerned doctor is not a combat class but there in the battlefields combat medic is the combat class so anyone to qoute the dev's saying the an entertainer was not entended to be a combat class ( we all know how much the devs know about the game) is in short narrow minded and problay was taken out of context( more likley) hence the entertianer is not a direct combat, damage wielding particpant, class but is an important part of the healing process so lets work together and not let this be implemented by the devs let the players imput count

sorry for the spelling and horrid sentence structure I am crafting my combat meds

Entertainer should get the mind heals forthese tworeasons:

1) As a class that can already heal mind wounds we already have the ability (hence training is already in place)

2) It would give our class the abilty to to join groups and travel with them to expierance the whole star wars galaxies instead of bieng the person that just waits by a campsite while others take a more active role...also kills the mind boggling grind of staying in the cantina. To the more social people it would also give them a wider chance to meet more people because hunting groups would say any mind healer want to join a hunt (fun times)

With those two things bieng said we need to have an active role with the devs like trying to figure out how much xp whould we get for healing the mind also what compromise will be meet to not have an infinte loop of heals (eg. timers in place.. drian in mind etc). At what level should an entiertianer get the abilty to heal mind in order to stop the dabblers who take up bounty hunter but take this up to keep them going ( please note i said bounty hunter but do not assume that they are the only class that does this they just happen to be the first class that came to my mind )

I ask for feedback and for someone with a better ideas to come forward since i am new to mmorpg and may of you are very highly intellegint help our class grow and expand

thank you

1) i agree with this reason
2) this is not a convincing reason. artisans, rangers, etc. all have to train a combat skill to be decent at combat. so do entertainers. entertainers already have reason to get out and see the world. even if you don't train combat, i don't mind having entertainers with CDEFs in my group, and i don't think anyone else does either. if it's hard to get a group, you don't have to TELL them how inept you are at combat, and you'll still be good to have around during the frequent downtimes.


here are my own reasons to agree with you:
a. i don't want some SL telling me what to do so i don't want to have one for my group.
b. there aren't enough SLs out there for them to be an essential group member.


i also agree it's important to come up with ideas before the devs come up with their own! we've seen how well THAT goes!

"Wounds accumulate slow enough that you can easily be in the field all night without really needing to heal them."

Not true. I was invited on a raid to endor a while back, and the disease there frequently gives people an entire bar of black mind wounds in a few seconds. Without myself and a couple other entertainers playing away in the camp, the group would've been sunk.

Here's my take on the issue, after speaking with some friends. For background, my first character is a Master Dancer and Teras Kasi Novice, and my second character is currently working through Commando.

When I started the game, I planned to be a marksman or a martial artist, and perhaps also dance a little. After about one hour of playing, however, I was totally sucked into the cantina life. It was fun, it was chatty, there were great people. It was nice. Over time I progressed in my combat and my dancing abilities, and eventually reached master dancer. Already at this point, one friend of mine had pretty much totally disappeared from the cantina, and a couple of others were on the way out. Some of us formed our own player cantina, which was fun, but since there were only a few of us, we've been unable to staff it as well as we'd like. Regardless, a lot of us started to go out into the field more often at this point.

And *that* was a lot of fun, too. A different kind of fun--but still mainly for social reasons (at least for my friends the performing artists.) We enjoy being out and about, seeing the world, working together to do things, and generally having a good time while we're at it. Well, to make a long story short, we ended up spending more and more time in the field, and less and less time in the cantina--either public (bad atmosphere which drove us out in the first place) or private (because only on our regular Friday party nights do we really get much of a crowd.

For myself, and at least a couple of other people, the feeling about performing is this: we have no *active* role to play in either the field, or, to be honest, off the field. This can be seen in the way that AFK performers have fairly well stolen center stage from the performers of old. There are still new batches of folks coming in, but there are also more and more people who just plain aren't there at all. This leads to a feeling of despondency: what can we do that they can't?

Well, we can go out in the field! That's what! We can heal mind wounds in camp, aiding parties that way. Sure, a master entertainer/master musician has used over half of their skill points on entertaining--but that's very important to heal those mind wounds!

Well, unfortunately, it doesn't really work that way. Wounds accumulate slow enough that you can easily be in the field all night without really needing to heal them. At least, in a group that works together well. So, what else can we do? Well, we can buff! Hurrah! But, of course, our buffs are not that impressive, contributing so little to survival that for the most part even groups of dedicated performer/adventurers will only buff up when they stop for some *other* reason.


This is the main reason I want some sort of active role for the performing professions (not necessarily the standard performing skills) in the field: because we need an active role, rather than a passive role. An ability we can carry to others, rather than letting them come to us. Something... that makes me feel needed in a group. Isn't it reasonable, when I've spent half of my skill points on something, that I should manage something better than a bot does?

Now, it's true that artisans are in a similar boat: they have skills that aren't used directly in the field. Maybe part of why this doesn't seem so bad is because, well, artisans can actually make money. But that's not such a big deal to me. Personally, I think it's more because the artisans are *doing* something--they need to go out and look for materials, experiment to come up with the best designs, judge the market for various items and price them. Set up vendors and sell on the bazaar. Drum up business.

There's a whole lot more activity there than in going to a cantina and roleplaying your heart out trying to get people to enjoy themselves, only to have them come in, grunt, drop a few pennies in your cup, and run off. Besides which, artisans can perform that role actively only part of the time, and do factory runs other parts of the time. (Perhaps not the most very dedicated artisans: I expect they have to spend a *lot* of time working on things, moving from one factory to another, etc.) And then the rest of the time, they can go out and adventure--while still using their skills in the background, whipping up that batch of really great grenades or whatever.

If I am an adventuring performer, I use my performer skills at most 5% of the time, and my adventuring skills 95% of the time. Why? Because for the most part, I am out with my friend adventuring. Sometimes we want to chill in a local cantina for a while, help soothe the minds of locals who haven't seen anyone good perform in ages, etc. But most of the time, my friends just want to go out into the wilds and do some hunting, or quests, or whatever. And the more time you spend out like this, the less possible it is to really connect with your patrons: because you're never in one place for hours on end (like, for example, the AFKers are.) It's a passing event: Bob X walks in, we chat a bit as I dance, Bob X leaves--and maybe if I'm lucky I'll run into him again in a week or two.


Anyway, this is where my concern for some active role for entertainers in groups comes in: I want to be out there in the field and feel that I couldn't have contributed more to my friends if I'd chosen to take some scouting skills or some medic skills instead of being a dancer. I don't want to be forced up against the wall of "well, I can be more useful to the group if I drop master dancer and all of dance wound healing, because master dancer and dancer's wound healing really doesn't help out here as much as novice medic does." I don't mean to say that master performers should be as effective and important as master doctors--but we should have a valuable role to play. Something so that when we face that qeustion, we can say "Ahh, but dancer lets me do *this*, that nobody else can do! Right here, right now, and not in the once-or-twice-a-night camp, and not in the once-a-night regroup in town."


For mechanics, I'm personally inclined to believe in some sort of localized "morale" effect around high level performers. Something that buffs allies nearby simply with your presence. A friend has pointed out that this is a dangerous idea: a character that does something simply by *being* there is superb bot material. I hope something that fits the star wars universe can be worked out: because otherwise, I'm very much afraid that I'll drop dancer completely to entertainer, like many friends have done. It's a heck of an investment for skills that I can't use when I'm actually with my friends playing.


Maybe that makes me a really non-dedicated performer--the fact that I'd rather be with my friends than with six bots, one person, and a handful of nearly-silent adventurers who are just passing through the cantina. Maybe it's just a problem with the culture, that cantinas aren't as fun any more. I can only try to suggest solutions that I think will help *me*, because I don't know exactly how other people look at it.


Really, I think that for me, it's all about not chosing between "Make use of my skills all the time and be tied to the cantina" or "Make use of my skills almost none of the time and wander freely."

That's why I think that *some* form of active mind healing for performers makes sense. I can't say how to do it, but I think we need it.

"Maybe that makes me a really non-dedicated performer"

To be honest, I sort of feel like this is the case. But that's not a negative thing...it's just a thing.

Something that may help musicians and dancers feel like their entertainer skills are more useful in the field is if they can just get people to go into a house for a few minutes and heal up BF and mind, then medics can heal wounds faster. It works in any house, and if you're just running missions there should be loads of public houses nearby. That's in no way a solution to make entertainers more valuable in the field, it's just something that can be done in the currently, without waiting on any changes. At the same time, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be asking for more if more is what you want.

Hijo: Sounds like you were on a very dangerous planet. So in that case, does it mean performers are only wanted on those super dangerous planets? I know that I haven't had problems like this yet at all. I must admit, however, that I've only been on Lok once or twice so far, and fighting against the apparently rather weak snorbals.

Anyway, I don't know. I *wanted* to be a dedicated entertainer. Dancing was the first thing I feel in love with in this game. But the public cantinas just don't do it, and I don't feel like dancing alone in our private cantina on Corellia until we manage to convince people to drop by more than once an hour. *shrug* As it is, I'd say that I'm pretty likely to surrender most of dancer soon, although I'd very much like not to.

I like the idea of US getting the mind healing.

Here are some of my reasons and ideas:

1) Idea: IF we get it, make it when you get a certin letter, you can move while playing, and can heal in the wild, BUT make it VERY slow, but would be good for long journeysl, cause then you dont have to stop

2) Reason: Having this implemented on us, will make more people come to cantinas, AND get us more money from tips, or more tips period.

3) Reason: There are more Entertainers than Squad Leaders

I dont think it should cause mind damage, cause if it caused mind WOUNDS it would just go back, and if it caused mind, we couldnt play as long, because there would be SO MANY people with mind damage

I don't like the idea of us getting Mind Heals. Why? Because if we did, this would be the currently the only way we would have any usefulness to a group.

Except if we had combat/medic skills.

But that's been my point. If someone is not a dedicated full-time Master Entertainer/Dancer/Musician, they are already capable of "travelling the galaxy", and adjusted their skill template to allow for options outside of entertaining. Giving them the ability to heal mind damage doesn't really matter, since they're already contributing in other ways.

Conversely, the full-time ME/MD/MM is already happy with not being in the GCW or whatever else. They're playing a very different type of SWG game and are loving every minute of it. When they don't, they adjust their skills to bring in something else. Giving them the ability to heal mind isn't going to make them go seek something they haven't already sought.

In my opinion, of course

Give it to Squad Leaders. They're already out in the front and already want to be part of the GCW, or mob hunting or whatever combat they can find. Healing mind damage only really matters in combat, and the only people that should have it are those who want to be in that combat.