Entertainer Archive
Thread: Entertainer Report 7/25/03
Here is the Entertainer report for this week. It was a tough decision trying to pick only five issues out of those submitted. I tried to be fair to all subclasses of entertainers by picking one issue for each one and then a couple that affect both musicians and dancers.
The following are the top issues that need to be addressed for the Entertainer classes for the week ending 7/26/03:
Musicians:
Novice entertainers cannot play higher level songs so most bands are trapped playing Starwars1 and Rock. This is a problem mainly in the highly populated cantinas. Currently the only options if a low “level” musician wants to join the group are; the group must drop to a low level song or deny him joining the group. This is very boring for both the more advanced musicians and for the patrons of the cantina. A couple of suggestions for correcting this are:
1)Allow the lower level player to play the higher level song, but only receive the experience he would receive for playing his highest song. He would not be able to start any songs above his level, only join them, and if he leaves the group he stops playing.
2)Allow bands to change the key of a song so that if they are forced to play the low level song they can at least make it sound a little different.
Dancers:
Dancers should have a way to receive the maximum experience for doing any dance they know. Musicians have a method for this based on whichever is higher, our song level or our instrument. We can get maximum experience for any song as long as we play our highest instrument.
Image Designers:
Image designers have a tough time seeing the changes they make to someone’s appearance; they very much need an interface more like the character creation one to make changes.
Miscellaneous:
1)Both musicians and dancers would like a method to deny services to other players. Currently the way the game is designed no matter how obnoxious a player is the musician/dancer still has no choice but to heal there mind wounds and battle fatigue. The only thing they can do is stop performing which punishes EVERYONE in the cantina. I recommend tying the “deny service” option into the ignore list, anyone ignored by the performer cannot receive healing from them. Also it would be nice to add a /bandignore feature that would make the entire band ignore someone, this would only be saved for the current play session.
2)A modification of the tip command to allow for the tipping of the entire band. I believe the fairest way to do this to make everyone happy would be to add a popup window whenever someone /tip’s a member of the band. The popup would say something like “Would you like your tip divided evenly among the Performing group?” Yes/No. Choosing the no option would tip the single performer just like now. If the performer is not in a group the tipper would not receive the popup.
My Pet Issue:
MONEY: The only ways for entertainers to make money using their professions are tips and gig missions. Tips are not a reliable source of income. Gig missions are very time consuming and for the amount of time spent on them they pay very little compared to destroy missions which combat classes can take two at a time and usually finish both in the time it takes to complete one gig mission. Also we can take delivery missions to try to supplement our income, but once again they pay very little compared to their destroy mission counterparts and we don’t earn experience while doing them. I did note that there will be entertainer based mission added, It is my hope that they pay based on your skill level and don’t just spit out less than 1000cr missions.
Thank you,
[name deleted]
vfvs11a
Entertainer Correspondent
I appreciate the effort that went into this... but I don't think a couple of these things represent the majority of entertainers at all.
The majority of entertainers have no interest in a deny services option, nor has anyone justified its necesity beyond "I want more tips"... /addignore already works for the purpose of rude and obnoxious customers.
Um, about music... am I halucinating, or is the fact that all the instruments sound the same not on this list? That is clearly an issue all entertainers agree needs to be changed and most want changed as a top priority.
Anyway, sorry to be negative about this being the first compilation of ideas and all... but I know there are 5 issues out there that all entertainers agree on, and this list contains like 1 or 2 of them and then a bunch of things that are even questionable as to whether or not the majority agree upon or not. Thanks for the effort though. ;P
Good list, vfvs. I agree with all of your points.
One problem I have with entertainer, is the super-macro + afk players. This makes our class a joke and most other players know of this. I agree with them, it's a cheap way of playing.
"The majority of entertainers have no interest in a deny services option, nor has anyone justified its necesity beyond "I want more tips"... /addignore already works for the purpose of rude and obnoxious customers."
I gather information from more than just these boards, and on SWG Vault a deny services option was the singly most requested item. Ignoring someone does NOT stop you from healing them. The majority of entertainers I have talked to definately do not want to heal someone who has bothered them to the point of being ignored.
Also I am not only representing musicians, I have to represent all three branches of entertainer. For example, I can't ignore IDs because I want to put more musician things. I have a list of 20+ issues, I can only pick 5 per week...I knew I couldn't make everyone happy.
Scott
I am rehashing what others have posted on this topic, BUT, I hope SOE reads this.
I think the respondent is full of beans. A real problem is obnoxious people who come for healing and stay to make snide comments about dancers. A female will get one abuse, a male with get another. They duel in the Cantina, pull out the pokemon pets and otherwise disrupt things. Having a /bounce or /bandbounce for the entertainers would be welcome, and I think that is suported by a VAST majority of entertainers.
Second I agree about AFK people macroing. If they are not playing /bandflorishes while AFK I ignore them. If they play AFK /bandflourishes and spam the band, I boot them.
If these two issues are handled, I would be happy.
You get a quota of 5 issues? Let me throw number 6 out there.
I would like to add one about ID, maybe there can be a NPC or Driod we can use for practice. It would work like the "heads" hair dressing students have to work on. Sometimes a person isn't willing to let you work on them, and one ID person had mad a guys head bald and wouldn't change it back. I fixed it easy, but it wasn't nice. If you petiton, a half hour later a CSR comes over, but often its faster to handle it yourself.
You gather information from the VN boards? /chuckle First of all, the VN boards are a joke... second of all, the single most requested item was not /deny services... in fact those types of threads were generally flamed for pages on end.
No, you are right, /addignore does not stop you from healing them... that wasn't the point. The point is, if someone is bothering you, then you can ignore them completely. Healing someone doesn't affect you in anyway except to give you xp - you use up no more action to heal 20 people than you do 1 person. The only thing that /deny would realistically accomplish, is give people who complain about tips (ala your "pet issue") a way to force people to tip better.
What's this about dancers having to do their highest dance to get the best xp? Not only is that hardly an issue, but what about the fact that formal/formal2 (and then lyric/lyric2) are all bugged and can't be viewed properly? Let's get the classes fixed before crying about xp and playing lowbie songs...
Anyway, I could go on but what's the point... I don't think a single one of your points is a top issue, and I don't think you understand what is going on with the class.
Hijo wrote:
You gather information from the VN boards? /chuckle First of all, the VN boards are a joke... second of all, the single most requested item was not /deny services... in fact those types of threads were generally flamed for pages on end.
They were important to the people on the board. I saw where serious entertainers had an opinionand he is conveying it.
Hijo wrote:
Anyway, I could go on but what's the point... I don't think a single one of your points is a top issue, and I don't think you understand what is going on with the class.
Where do you play? Your experience is a lot different than mine. I am even on a nice quiet corner of the universe, good neighborhood, close to schools, not many idiots but we get a few.
We have to go "on stike" frequently when people harass the dancers. Why should the dancers give them any benefit? We have people tell the band you suck. Why shouldn't they call a bouncer to remove them? This would happen in real life, in fact, usually the torso goes out the front door and the arms would go out the back door.
I have seen people go prone to emote "idiot_greifer looks up female_dancers skirt."
Often people tell male dancers "Are you gay" oremote kissing male on males. Even after being told to stop.
People dueling around the band and dancers. Not PVP where a IMP-REB fight breaks out, but people challenging everyone, dancers, band members, and bystanders. Like a slitherhorn player is going to fight a guy carring a laser carbine.
deja vu...from my bard TL days in DAoC..
I didn't post your issues, so I obviously know nothing about the class, /rolls eyes.
The solution to the musician issues you listed, should be done by adding new songs at each level and not by allowing everyone to play all the songs regardless of skill. If we allow lower skilled musicians to play the higher songs, then we will take away the accomplishments of the higher skilled musicians. We have all been the new guy at one time and it is hypocritical to demand that we not have to play a lower song anymore when others had to do so for us. If we can get new songs, especially at the lower levels, then this issue will be solved. Also, based on the game mechanics as I see them, changing the key would have to be accomplished by adding new music files for each song and would be just like adding another song, so let's just request new songs.
"We have to go "on stike" frequently when people harass the dancers."
Does your server not have /addignore? Maybe that should be added to the bug list...
Further, have you read all of the posts from people that want /deny. A good 50% of them are people saying "I want a way to deny services to people who don't tip me". That's the last thing we need.
"I didn't post your issues, so I obviously know nothing about the class, /rolls eyes."
Oh heaven forbid I disagree with a bard TL, they are obviously expert entertainers seeing as this class was specifically designed NOT to be like bards from daoc and evercamp. No, you didn't post anything more than a wishlist of services for people who are a) newbies that can't understand why they only get newbie songs and b) not making tips because they only have newbie songs, and therefore you don't come off as knowing/caring much about the class. If someone doesn't want to play rock anymore, then level up like everyone else has. You may as well just give everyone all the songs and instruments so that no one is jealous or has to work to get anywhere... that will solve all these issues.
If you think the only people who want a deny service are those want to force tips, then you have more issues than anyone else does. I'm sorry you don't like what I submitted, but you know what ? TOUGH !
You're doing exactly like I predicted someone would. I didn't submit what you wanted submitted so you come here and flame and bash me. If you think you can do better, feel free to convince SOE of that and you can take this job from me the clueless n00b when my time is up. I'll laugh out loud when someone is here doing the same thing to you that you are doing to me.
P.S. Did you apply for this position and not get it ? You sure don't seem to like me here.
"If you think the only people who want a deny service are those want to force tips, then you have more issues than anyone else does."
I believe my post says 50%, and that is very reflective of what I've read here. I am not taking all of my data from your one "so what are your issues thread", I am taking it from everything that has been posted from day 1 of these forums, i.e., from people that have played the class more than some of the more recent posters, people for whom entertainer comes before combat and making money.
And no, I don't want your "position"... I want to be able to maintain my own opinion. 