Entertainer Archive
Thread: AFK Musicans and Dancers who Macro
1> Please do not stand in the middle of the dancing area, blocking it from musicians and dancers. Please go to a corner and go AFK so that everyone else can have space to perform for customers. Please remember to put your AFK sign on so that nobody will try and talk to you for training or information. Unresponsive people (who have not responded for an hour) without AFK sign usually get booted.
2> This is CRUCIAL when you make your macro DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT use words in you macro! Last night this one guy at the Coronet Cantina did everything right in the first point EXCEPT he had this macro running which kept telling one every 5 min or so to tip the entertainers. Let me tell you, by the end of the night the other entertainers AND the customers were looking for a way to either kill him, kick him off, or probably grief him later. He stayed that way from 8pm when I got on until 3am when I finally logged off after getting my coveted "Master Dancer" title. Actually I believe some people reported him for spamming them.
Being AFK and macroing is fine, but please do it with a thought as to the other people sharing your performance space and to your customers. You won't get tips if you alienate the regulars who grow angry with your macro spam. And the other entertainers will never want to group with you again which will slow down your gain of entertainment xp. For example in a full troup of entertainers (20) the xp you get is nearly 3 or 4 TIMES as much as by yourself.
Thanks!
(will go post this in Dancer and Musican forum)
KitanaVorr wrote:
2> This is CRUCIAL when you make your macro DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT use words in you macro! Last night this one guy at the Coronet Cantina did everything right in the first point EXCEPT he had this macro running which kept telling one every 5 min or so to tip the entertainers. Let me tell you, by the end of the night the other entertainers AND the customers were looking for a way to either kill him, kick him off, or probably grief him later. He stayed that way from 8pm when I got on until 3am when I finally logged off after getting my coveted "Master Dancer" title. Actually I believe some people reported him for spamming them.
Being AFK and macroing is fine, but please do it with a thought as to the other people sharing your performance space and to your customers. You won't get tips if you alienate the regulars who grow angry with your macro spam. And the other entertainers will never want to group with you again which will slow down your gain of entertainment xp. For example in a full troup of entertainers (20) the xp you get is nearly 3 or 4 TIMES as much as by yourself.
I hear you!
I hate the spammertainers.
I usually heckle them. One musician had a macro where he said, "I'm really an undercover bounty hunter. Tip me quick before anyone gets suspicious." It was cute the first time. Every 5 minutes got irritating. I set up my own spam to respond to him so I followed it up with, "J'Lo is really an uncover spammer. Ignore her quick before anyone gets suspicious." It usually got laughs, and I got tipped.
Another spammertainer said something like, "Tipping is not required, but it is encouraged." One of the patrons followed it up with, "Ignoring is not required, but it is encouraged."
So, these people can be a virtue if you have a good comeback that makes patrons laugh. That's how I make most of my tips anyway.
Er, I should clarify that I make most of my tips by entertaining. Not by heckling spammertainers. That would have to be a big problem for me to make a living off of heckling others.
if you know an entertainer is afk macroing, send a /report.
no muss, no fuss. soon, only the 'real' entertainers will be left.
It is NOT a bannable offense. If it is, over half (perhaps more) of all entertainers and artisans would be banned. Using 3rd party macros IS a bannable offense.
The only time I will afk macro in a group is if there isn't anyone else playing instruments (normally at like 6 AM), and I'll tell people I'm leaving my bandfill on or whatever. I know how much it sucks to dance to nothing. I'm not going to put the people who are already suffering through footloose or poplock through any more pains. 
I don't mind AFKs as long as it is either for a short time (we all have real lives (I hope)), or they go off in the corner and are quiet. Anyone who has a macro that says ANYTHING should be banned. I HATE TIP SPAMMERS! I've started just /slap ing them whenever I hear someone begging for tips. Then they call me rude.... oh well.. Anyway, I'm done.
Macroing to level your character is bannable if you are not at the keyboard while doing so.
"you may not use or distribute macros or other programs which would allow unattended game play"
You've got to earn your xps if you don't want to do so choose another class.
LOL ... Well Alich I guess we know why you were trying to twist the words around in the terms huh... 
Chessack wrote:
Boot 'em from the group every time, and maybe they will cut it out. And NO, I am not talking about someone who goes AFK for 5 minutes, or people like the guy who is the only musician in the group, staying there AFK so the dancers have something to dance to. I am talking about the people who keep macroing AFK just to "level."
No, they won't cut it out. For the AFK macro person, it still benefits him to run the macro. He sees his options as such:
A. 10 experience per flourish for 6 hours while he goes to the movies.
B. 20 experience per flourish for 6 hours while sitting in front of a computer doing nothing (since I doubt he is the type to interact).
He sees the 10 experience as the better payoff.
But I discovered one reason to keep someone in a band. There was a very annoying musician who spammed the cantina over and over again. Unnecessary emotes and stupid phrases. The band leader did /stopband. Oh, the AFKer wasn't playing anymore. What a pity. Oh, and he still does his emotes and stupid phrases even though he's not moving. How funny. Let's all point and laugh.
It turns out that he wised out and stopped joining the group when he would come back. Too bad.
So, yeah, /stopband is a good way to get at those musician spammers.
This is a roleplaying game. I play it with the goal of roleplaying my character in mind. If she levels up in a skill great. And sure when she is close to levelling I do check it a bit more often to see how things are going.
But utlimately I am there to roleplay not to level. What is the point of acheiving, for example, "master dancer" all the way from "novice entertainer" if you were never once at your keyboard to do it? Just to "say you are one"? What does that mean? Who even cares?
If these people really want to "level up without doing anything" they should just go to www.progressquest.com, and join up on the PQ realms. That game is specifically designed to be an AFK levelup grinder... It's a spoof of EQ of course, and is designed to poke fun at the "progress makers" but heck I would think these people would love it. And it would annoy the rest of us a whole heck of a lot. And better yet it's FREE!
Not sure I understand the point of having a 128 MB graphics card, 2 zillion gigs of RAM, a 4 zillion herz processor, and this kick butt game with all the great bells-and-whistles, if you are basically running it as a screensaver. Regular screensaver programs are cheaper and they don't charge you $15/month to run them.
C
Well, 1.) I have not played any other MMORPG.
Other than that, even if it is bannable, I have yet to see anyone get banned for it. I feel that in order to /report someone and get their account banned, they would really have to annoy people to death! Oh well. I see my other post was deleted, so I must have been wrong /bow3 all
AFK use of the Star Wars built in macroing environment (ala /flo 1;/pause 20;/flo 2
is not illegal or prohibited. If it was why in gods name would the function be there. For that matter why allow in game macro's to be of significant length. For that matter why allow the loading of alias text files.Expand your scope of understanding regarding what they mean about "Macro programs".
1. you must not have played a mmorpg before
2. you must not have read the TOS
mmorpg developers are always very clear on this matter.
Boot 'em from the group every time, and maybe they will cut it out. And NO, I am not talking about someone who goes AFK for 5 minutes, or people like the guy who is the only musician in the group, staying there AFK so the dancers have something to dance to. I am talking about the people who keep macroing AFK just to "level."
I am not sure what the point of it is, since the whole fun of the entertainment profession is in the doing of the entertainment, but IMO they should be excised from the group with extreme prejudice.
I am hoping SOE enforces a "10 min AFK = /stopdance" functionality in a future patch, or something nearly like it. Perhaps wishful thinking but give me the permission to HOPE, eh? ...
C