Entertainer Archive
Thread: Healing XP slowing to a snail's pace?
riotcontrol wrote:
The thing is - you can force those people to play in a starwarsy manner by just encouraging them to do starwarsy things in order to accomplish the typical 1337 goals. They won't mind. If faction rank could be achieved faster than faction farming by, for example, wearing full Stormtrooper armor, not talking in spatial except in pre-designed sentences, and patrolling a NPC city, you'd have realistic-looking ST patrols all around.
No, you wouldn't have realistic stormtrooper patrols. OK, maybe the odd one. But the problem is, patrolling an NPC city, regardless of how much faction rank you are achieving as you do it, is boring, at least to most gamers. Of course, a good roleplayer could do this and have a ball (I know one on our server who is outstandingly infuriating as a Stormtrooper), but a good roleplayer would not need the carrot of faction points in the first place.
You need to understand that the heart of the CU, the heart of why the devs have hosed every non-combat prof in favor of the combat profs (remember when this game advertised being "loot free"?), is because the majority of gamers, and yes, SWG customers, are "combat dewds" (no slur intended) -- that is, they are primarily interested in combat. They did what they did in the CU (turning it into a psuedo-arcade/action game) specifically because people wanted more fast and furious action. People like this are NOT going to be happy walking around in ST armor doing mindless patrols rather than combat, and forcing them to do it would really tick them off.
Your fundamental premise is false... that in the name of SW themeliness, you can force someone to have fun the way YOU want them to have fun. Unfortunately (or perhaps I should say fortunately), fun does not work that way. Game developers have had to learn over and over again (always the hard way, since they never seem to learn from history), this harsh lesson: you can't force people to have fun a certain way. The devs of SWG have forgotten (or ignored, or willfully refused to learn) this rule over and over. Perhaps its most recent incarnation is the "encouraged" (i.e. forced) grouping. If someone likes to solo his missions, and has more fun doing that than grouping, you can't force him to have fun grouped. You might be able to force him TO group, for a little while, but inevitably if he is not having fun, and is miserable, he'll just cancel the game and move on.
The reality, whether entertainers want to admit it or not, is that most people who play this game hate BF -- it leads to down time, and that down time is boring to them. Most of them do not care about our entertainment -- they have heard the songs all before, seen the dances all before, and so on. Forcing people into the cantina who do not want to be there was never a good idea. It led to abuse (remember all the stories of the gamer dewds dissing entertainers way back when, before we became irrelevant and they just ignored us?) and antipathy toward the entertainers by all the combatant types. So was it worth it -- forcing a bunch of angry, bitter gamers who are chomping at the bit to get back to that battle raging outside, to sit there and listen to songs they don't want to hear, and engage in banter they do not want to engage in, because it makes the game better for us if they do? No... it's not worth it. It helped poison the atmosphere of the cantinas.
I, for one, would rather entertain a small number of people who actually WANT to see my performances, then a huge number of aggravated "gamer dewds" who resent the fact that they have to watch me at all. I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week.
Plus, if they aren't having fun in the cantina, I don't want to force them. It's not fair to force them to do something they don't want to, any more than it would be to force the same on me.
This is a game. The point of playing a game is to have FUN. We need to come up with a way that will make the game fun for us without making it be not-fun for other people (down time).
C
Chessack wrote:
I, for one, would rather entertain a small number of people who actually WANT to see my performances, then a huge number of aggravated "gamer dewds" who resent the fact that they have to watch me at all. I'll take quality over quantity any day of the week.
Plus, if they aren't having fun in the cantina, I don't want to force them. It's not fair to force them to do something they don't want to, any more than it would be to force the same on me.
This is a game. The point of playing a game is to have FUN. We need to come up with a way that will make the game fun for us without making it be not-fun for other people (down time).
C
The thing is Chess, they wouldn't want to see your performance, they would want you to press the buttons that lead to their buff in the most efficient and timely way possible. They would make you a vending machine. Without knowing what mechanism Development intends to use, this is the only outcome I can see.
The game forces things I don't want to do as a peaceful entertainer on me all the time. Random stops while driving, angry critter spawns while driving, "combat dewds" who think the cantina is a good place for a duel, lethal critters outside my cottage when I wake in the morning. If we're forced into those situations in the name of "realism" then there's no quibble with forcing a combatant to rest a little. BF healing takes less than 1% of my time ingame, even pre CU, and that is not a heck of a lot complain about.
Downtime may not be fun for people, but being a buff vendor at McCantina wouldn't be fun for me. Based on par for the course, this will not be a seamless system where an ATK entertainer can do normal relaxing fun things and hand out buffs to whoever desires them without interruption to routine. There will be hoops to jump through, negotiations to handle, and bugs to overcome, we can count on it. This silver bullet won't cure any resentment. When I want to be a seller of things, I play a crafter, I wheel I deal, and I enjoy it. But I want something different when I entertain, and from what I've seen here, it won't be so.
As fellow ranger i cannot disagree more with your point of view on bf...
SmedleyLlama wrote:
riotcontrol wrote:
Hmm... I have a non-Entertainer (purely combat, actually) character, and I've never seen BF as any kind of a "kludge" - instead, it is a mechanic that greatly promotes player-to-player interaction, and encourages roleplaying.
I don't see a single reason why I, as a non-Entertainer should "love taking BF away". It's stupid enough that all the Med. Centers are completely empty because of the lack of Wound healing XP. The BF change does nothing but destroys the starwarsiness and "realism" of the world.
The only non-Entertainer-character-having players I can think of that will "love" this change are the 1337D3WD players with pwning-oriented combat-machine characters. And they, despite their numbers, don't really belong in a Star Wars MMORPG world anyway.
Being a Ranger should be enough to show a lack of desire for 1337D3WDness on my part.
But how does BF increase the "starwarsiness" and add "realism" to the game?
Why do the entertainer professions need an artificial crutch in order to be useful? Why wouldn't it be a better idea to give them abilities that make them desirable, rather than something that has to be forced upon the population? This is the part I don't understand.
SmedleyLlama wrote:
Wolveryne40 wrote:
Can tell you this much, you pull that BF healing aspect from entertainers. I know for a fact i wont be going in If i dont have to waste my time stopping and i can continue on grabbing loot, xp, finish quests just that little bit faster, i will be doing that.
Wolveryne,
If you had your effective combat range increased by going to see a show, would you do it? Or had your accuracy increased, or your odds of finding better loot, or anything else your mind can imagine. Would you stop by the cantina now and then?
Sure you would. Because you would be rewarded for doing so. This is positive reinforcement vs negative punishment.
Then again.. I'm not sure why you would argue against BF being removed if your time is limited already.
No, you wouldn't... Read about CAPS... There is no use. Most masters are capped, either by their own skills or by CAs. Heck, a lot of those CA's and other addition BE stuff is not even working as it should....
So what makes you think a minor entertainer buff ?would?
omadnay wrote:
Suraknar wrote:
" We want entertainers to be more like 'entertainers', and less like 'healers'.
In general, we don't want to force interaction. You should go to watch an entertainer because you want to, not because you have to. It'll be better for this to be a positive interaction ("I go see an entertainer to get something good") rather than a negative interaction ("I go see an entertainer in order to get rid of something bad")."
I am sorry, but I am thinking that you are not thinking here.
Doing battle is a harsh reality of the Star Wars Universe, but that does not mean that battle is a Good thing per say. Hence there is a negative effect to it, Battle Fatigue, and thus, to get rid of this negative "bad" effect as you put it, you have to do a Positive action and Interact with some of your fellow Players, who are there to south the mind and perfom a Positive action in turn to nulify that something bad ...
Not hard to see it that way was it?
That's a great point that has not really been put so simply until now...
Combat should hold a certain negative result... many of us have agreed on that.
Battle Fatigue shold not be viewed as the negative aspect of Entertainers.
Entertainers should be viewed as the positive ANSWER to the negative result of combat (Battle Fatigue).
May the force be with you.
- Omadda Szool
Kauri
wow, just one word....
QFE
psikobunny wrote:
The thing is Chess, they wouldn't want to see your performance, they would want you to press the buttons that lead to their buff in the most efficient and timely way possible. They would make you a vending machine. Without knowing what mechanism Development intends to use, this is the only outcome I can see.
It's funny, we're already talking about the same problems we were with the mindbuffs. I've seen numerous posts here saying what psiko said above.
And, really, I also believe this sort of thing is a huge problem. However, as I said in my first post, the problem was not the mindbuff. The problem was it's implementation. And, that implementation within a world of sanctioned 100% AFK.
You take away the ability to afk, or at least make it not worthwhile (like 30 different types of buffs to cycle through), and the vast majority of your problems are solved.
Despite what some may say, the mindbuff did not lead to all the negative effects in the Cantina. The AFK did. And, if you take away AFK, or the usefulness of AFK, then the customers are *not* going to treat you like vending machines. You know why? Because in a world without AFK, where people can't just watch the person right beside you, *you* have the power to set your own terms. If someone treats you with disrespect, you can /ignore and /denyservice. In a world without afk, you *can* set a /covercharge. The reason all of these things don't work right now has nothing to do with the services that we have offered, or might be able to offer in the future. It has everything to do with the ease of getting these services from an AFK performer.
The same holds true for every single profession. The only reason the other professions haven't been ruined by AFK is because none of them can be AFK'ed 100% of the time like dancer or musician. Because, if they could, I guarantee it would've happened. Even the doctor buffs were afk'able. However, it was more of a pain in the ass than anything. There were some, sure. But, those doctors who chose to buff at the keyboard had a never ending stream of customers because they were far more efficient by playing at the keyboard. But, if the doc bots could have sat in the Coronet starport and buffed AFK with as much or better efficiency and power as the doc bots, then you better believe the same thing would have happened to the docs that happened to the entertainers.
However, if somehow we get buffs that can't be afk'ed with efficiency, then the control is returned to the entertainers, the control to set prices and to deny service to those leet dewds who can't be bothered to respect what we do. Because I tell ya what, even during the time of the buffbots, I *never* let anyone make me feel like a vending machine, nor do I ever intend to.
JFreeman wrote:
We want entertainers to be more like 'entertainers', and less like 'healers'.
In general, we don't want to force interaction. You should go to watch an entertainer because you want to, not because you have to. It'll be better for this to be a positive interaction ("I go see an entertainer to get something good") rather than a negative interaction ("I go see an entertainer in order to get rid of something bad").
JFreeman wrote:
Yes, it's too slow.
We want to change the 'healing' line to a 'props' line that allows you to craft and utilize 'stage props' (weapons, armor and so on that just look like weapons and armor). We're increasing the xp rate gain overall, and removing battle fatigue from the game entirely. We have some other enhancements to the entertainer professions that we want to do as well (profession-specific inspiration buffs for non-combat professions), but this is what is currently in development.
Why don't you guys figure a way to heal wounds better. Right now its hard enough to find a doc, since they were nerfed. Yeah Jedi can do it too, but they try to stay hiden because of vis.
Increasing the xp rate is cool, thumbs up!
But seriously work on the wound healing please!
I don’t know, maybe I’m just missing something HUGE here, but based on the little info we have so far…
I don’t like it one bit.
Was not there a plan to “revive” NPC cities at one point? How exactly will this help? The way I see it, it will make NPC cities even more deserted and useless.
Largest percentage of players are combats, yet as entertainers we will be of no use to them unless they’re looking to hire us for a party? The inspiration Buffs are nice, but definitely not a sole reason to travel to see an Entertainer. In time it takes to travel to a cantina and get the buff they could just run a mission and even up the exp gain without any Inspiration Buff, plus doing so they have additional chance for loot drops. With grouping for combatants being a must, not many of them will view 10% exp gain as important when balancing possibility of loosing their place in group.
And what about the new players? How will this help starting new Entertainers to fit in to the community? How will they make credits to pay for training or other things?
The new players choosing combat profession will basically grow up without ever knowing there is an Entertainer Profession unless they accidentally run in to one.
Please release more information about what the real place in game for Entertainers will be. Give us an overview of all the things to come so we can form real opinion on this.
I don’t think it’s too much for me to ask, that my character will actually have a purpose and real use, after all this is labeled as a “multi-player” game.
I am also confused about the “making entertainers less healers and more entertaining” statement. Fist of all, who exactly will the entertainers be entertaining? Themselves? And secondly, if you truly see art and entertainment as non “healing” then I do feel sorry for you. Maybe you should take a day off, step away from your keyboard and go visit a museum or see an opera or go to your favorite band’s concert and then come here and tell us entertainment is not healing.
SolitudeInMusic wrote:
Why don't you guys figure a way to heal wounds better. Right now its hard enough to find a doc, since they were nerfed. Yeah Jedi can do it too, but they try to stay hiden because of vis.
Increasing the xp rate is cool, thumbs up!
But seriously work on the wound healing please!
I'll give a small cheer to this myself. You folks have NEVER found an acceptable way to get Medics and Docs into the Hospitals. Before you eliminate BF, find a POSITIVE way to encourage that first, so we can see the principle in action. Entertainers left the cantinas because of AFKers. The only times I've seen significant people in a Hospital were when AFK tumbling brought them there, and even still 99% of those people never healed anyone who came in for service.
I'm all for a combat role for medicine professions, but there needs to a spectrum of rewards for all environments. Make combat the reward in dangerous places. Make medicine rewarding in combat or in the cities. Make Entertaining rewarding out of combat. I'm not advocating further delays on fixing entertainment, but the road you've told us we have togoi down looks dark and scary, and the road we've been on has been dark and scary enough.
psikobunny wrote:I'll give a small cheer to this myself. You folks have NEVER found an acceptable way to get Medics and Docs into the Hospitals. Before you eliminate BF, find a POSITIVE way to encourage that first, so we can see the principle in action. Entertainers left the cantinas because of AFKers. The only times I've seen significant people in a Hospital were when AFK tumbling brought them there, and even still 99% of those people never healed anyone who came in for service.
I'm all for a combat role for medicine professions, but there needs to a spectrum of rewards for all environments. Make combat the reward in dangerous places. Make medicine rewarding in combat or in the cities. Make Entertaining rewarding out of combat. I'm not advocating further delays on fixing entertainment, but the road you've told us we have to goi down looks dark and scary, and the road we've been on has been dark and scary enough.
I wouldn't really count on something like that being the actual goal here - not much has been said about the Med. Centers/Hospitals since the CURB and I'm inclined to believe that the current Doc situation is just like they want it to be. It almost looks like the new set of game designers/developers (and soon perhaps even the new set of players?) doesn't even know what those buildings were for...
JFreeman wrote:
In general, we don't want to force interaction. You should go to watch an entertainer because you want to, not because you have to.
Ok I am lost. I am forced to hunt down a jedi to heal my wounds will health wounds go away.
You all posted before that crafters need to hire someone to take them to their harvestors. are you going to removeagrofrom creatures.
To gain good XP you need to group, Will you be removing the need to group for best XP gains?
You know we do not wish to be forced to have any sort of "interaction" in a multi player game. Also will my new Toy guns and Halloween costumes "props" require resources where I will need to "Interact" with other players? I really do not have the skill points for artisian and surveying.. and I can not afford to buy the resources. Seems to me these "props" belong there in the armorsmith and other artisian fields.
Why not replace the four wound healing box's withspecific buff. NOT noncombat buffs.
example
Wound healing 1=general Melee defense +10%
Wound Healing 2=General Range Defense +10%
Wound healing 3=General Melee Speed +10%
Wound Healing 4=General Ranged speed +10%
master level =+5 % over a previous buff
Limit the Buffs one per a dance one per a musician. This woudl also require a "/setp(buffname) target". say I want a range speed buff, I find a live entertainer that can perform the buff, he/she targets me and "/setpRSB" now if there is a cover charge I get the menu to click accept. if no cover charge I also get the menu to prevent myself from recieving I buff I do not wish. I did not need to find a master but a master would add a little more to the buff.
I would much rather have a use in the game then a Toy maker.. grrrrrr