Entertainer Archive
Thread: So who do I trust?
It's very, very clear what goes on in the development process. The devs may hear a complaint from entertainers -- they have this time, e.g., "Heal XP is too hard to get." They come up with a solution, and keep it secret (it's like they're working for the KGB or something, for no good reason I can fathom). They then get out the nearest stone slab and carving tools and write the change in stone. THEN they tell the corrs, "This is the new change. Love it or leave it."
You don't think that's how it works? Go visit the BE forum. Or the CH forum. Do you have any idea how many changes have happened since the abomination that is the CU, to those two profs, that their correspondents have opposed? The CH correspondent has not gotten the devs to do ONE THING the CHs have asked for in months... the devs just made up their minds, "Pets are not going to tank anymore" and that's it... nothing the correspondent has tried to do has changed that.
So why on earth are any of you assuming that, even if Eshie and co. were 100% adamantly opposed to BF going away, the devs would care one way or the other? Eshie also (I assume) is 100% adamantly opposed to AFKing... do you blame her because the devs insist it is still a "valid alternative playstyle?" Tiaga 100% times 10 opposed AFKing (read ANY of his posts on the subject). AFKing was not removed from the game during his tenure, either.
The correspondents do get to propose ideas to the devs, but once the devs get out the slab of stone and chisel in it, the correspondents can't do anything about it. Just ask the CH correspondent about the CU pet nerfs (which have been MASSIVE) and how much say he has had over it. Or ask the BE over the BE pet crafting changes that cause slice hounds to be 12 feet tall, and whether he's had any say over the changes. The devs do not work this way... They work in secret, come up with what they think will work, and then they tell us, "This is how it is going to be, period." You cannot blame Eshie and the other correspondents for that.
We know for a fact, that even during Panthu's time (which is going back some months now) the devs were saying "entertainers are not healers." They have had this in mind for at least half a year and probably more. They decided this, got out their little tools, and wrote it on their stone slab. No correspondent's going to get them to change it now.
You don't like BF taken out of the game? Duly noted. Expect it to have about as much influence as BEs saying "We do not want to be medicine crafters!", or CHs saying "We do not want our pets nerfed!" or hell pretty much everyone saying, "Your new icons suck, bring back the old ones."
C
In the past, pre "mind buff time", we did fine in cantinas only with BF. The fighters had visited us from time to time to get the BF lowered to zero, they relaxed a little bit and we had nice chats in most cantinas without any spam at that point of time.
Then we suddenly got the "mind buffs" and that had been the moment the ent buff bot hell had begun. I am happy that the "mind buffs" are gone again,because with it most bots are gone too. I can not beleave that they are thinking about adding another form of entertainer buff to the game because then we may see the "return of the bots". So far the bot owner always found a way to macro buffing, so i do not want to see any new buff in exchange for BF as long as it is possible to macro our profession.
ivote for no change to BF ... it worked fine in the past, and will work fine in future to see the fighters from time to time in a cantina
DivaShowtime wrote:
In the past, pre "mind buff time", we did fine in cantinas only with BF. The fighters had visited us from time to time to get the BF lowered to zero, they relaxed a little bit and we had nice chats in most cantinas without any spam at that point of time.
Then we suddenly got the "mind buffs" and that had been the moment the ent buff bot hell had begun.
I mean no offense to you here, but that's simply untrue -- or rather, it's technically true but highly over-simplified. The full chain of events was as follows:
1. Game launch. Everyone is a n00b. Because of this, people don't know to clone, or don't know how to clone right (for instance, the manual gave at least me, and I know I was not alone, the mistaken impression that if you were cloned anywhere, you could beam back there after death -- even to another planet). Weapons are weak and armor weaker... Meaning we are in battle a long time (weaker weapons take down enemies more slowly) and take more wounds (from having less defense). In addition to BF, mind could be targeted and hit with bleed shots (that also did massive wounds -- a red conning NPC gave me 500 mind wounds once from a single head-bleed shot), and entertainers could heal that. At this point, people were getting tons of BF and mind wounds because they did not know how to play the game. There was a huge amount of Heal XP to go around, and people stayed in the cantinas.
2. Expertise among the players. After a few months, people learned how to play the game. As a result, they cloned correctly, thus taking less BF. They still took mind wounds, but with better armor/weapons and knowledge of the game, they took less. The total amount of heal XP to be had declined, and the cantinas started to empty. This marked the FIRST appearance, in any real numbers of AFK macroers... Gone were the days where you could level in a couple of weeks off of just live game play, so your options became (1) take months to level live, or (2) AFK macro in a couple of weeks. Some people chose (2), but AFKers were still in the vast minority.
3. The first Jedi unlocked. At first people didn't know exactly what did it, but with holocrons, people pieced it together and eventually the devs admitted that it was just 5 or 6 random professions, chosen at char creation, that would let you unlock. So people started going out and getting holocrons and finding what prof to master. Many were told, since it represents 1/6 of all professions in the game, to master an entertainer profession. These are people who do not have any desire to be entertainers; they are just doing it because a little box told them to. They have no interest in being live, so they take the AFK system from step 2 above, and start powerlevelling their dancers and musicians. This tips the balance from there being slightly more live than AFK entertainers, to there being WAAAAY more AFKers.
4. Sinda Blackstar and others argue that the BF healing and the AFKing are killing us... players are starting to hate and resent entertainers. Tales of them being nasty and abusive are legion. Sinda argues for weeks and weeks that we need to have a positive role and not a negative one (or one that is associated with a negative -- BF). She lobbies to get our trivial "master buff" (which was 25% for half an hour or something) increased to the level of doctor buffs. Ultimately she succeeds, getting dancers a full tree progression (the tech line) where we go from +25% to +100% mind buff for up to 3 hours... similar to a doc buff. I am not dissing Sinda here -- I loved Sinda, and I was totally on board with her idea. I too, thought this would be a great boon to the entertainer professions. Note that mind buffing was requested by dancers who were looking to curb AFKing and make the profession more positive. This proves the old adage, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
5. Buffing goes in thanks to the efforts (honest efforts to improve entertainment) of Sinda, Ravenmist, Tiaga, SlickRiptide, Velvet-Dancer, Sultrina, and a few others -- ALL people who hated AFK macroing at the time (I believe it was Velvet-Dancer who coined the term "LAMErs" -- Long-term Afk Macro Entertainers). However, what we did not count on was that it could be macroed. Sinda in fact asked for a targeting requirement, not realizing that it'd be so trivial to script a /target; /setperf; /buffmacro; /lather_rinse_repeat macro. I think we can safely say everyone who worked hard to get mind buffing put into the game to a real level (rather than the previously useless master-only buff) was utterly horrified at the implementation -- or rather, at the loopholes that implementation provided. AFK macroers went from people simply trying to grind through the prof and get Jedi opened, to full-time 24/7 buff bots, and it became its own little industry.
That's the chronology of what happened. There are some lessons here. One is, no matter what you do, as long as AFKing is sanctioned by the devs, we will have it.
The other, which is germaine to this thread, is that even the best efforts of the correspondents and active posters can go wrong if the devs do not really listen and understand what is at the heart of the problem.
Therefore, I highly recommend cutting Eshie and the other correspondents some slack here. The devs have shown with mind buffs and other things that they are great at listening to half of our idea and ignoring the other half that will provide the balance. So they "got" Sinda's (great) idea of having worthwhile positive (buff) effects on the game, while IGNORING the reason for it -- which was to find some positive way to get performers to be AT KEYBOARD.
C
Message Edited by Chessack on 06-24-2005 10:59 AM
I drive my friends insane because I can remember stuff they did 25 years ago. Their spouses love it though... I can regale them with stories of the goofy things their significant other did when we were 10 years old and suchlike. Heheh.
C
LOL, go get 'em Dej!!!
Hehe, I remember doing tiny buffs back in October of '03 before I hit master.
Don't blame mind buffs for the AFK 'tainer, rather put the blame where it belongs on the Xmas Holocrons of December '03. That was the beginning of the end when all the combat types were in the cantinas AFK dancing or playing music because their holocron told them to master that profession. Then SOE secretly kept upping the anti for the number of professions you needed to master to unlock and we saw an even greater influx of zombies.
This drove many of the "real" entertainers out of the cantinas. Then along came solo-grouping and the combat types need for 24/7 buffs. These game mechanics were instituted and sanctioned by those pesky devs.
It's so funny now to hear people complain if they see an AFK 'tainer in the cantinas or to hear them complain that those ATK are not flourishing enough to heal BF quickly,
My main point though, was that buffs themselves were suggested by a prominent dancer as a means to get rid of AFKing. It was not the idea of buffs that was a problem, but how they were implemented. And the fundamental issue still remains, which is that the devs see nothing wrong with AFKing. As long as that's true, nothing we ask for will EVER prevent it, because they see no reason to bother.
And of course the other point is, it is not fair to blame the correspondents for the devs not listening, because every correspondent since AFKing became "trendy" has asked the devs to get rid of it and they do not listen.... so why would you think they would listen now?
The other truth is that the entertainers I know are split on whether taking BF out will be good or bad. I think it will be a good thing provided they replace it with something we do that is worthwhile. And as I said elsewhere, the replacement needs to go in on the day that BF is removed. If they pull another, "Well we are removing BF now and then we will find something for you to do later" (as they have done with other profs like CH, "Well we are taking pet specials out now and will worry about them in a few months"), it will be the end of the entertainment profs, pretty much for good.
C
Sirii, I'm afraid I don't even understand where you are coming from anymore - or perhaps it's more where you are heading? Why in the galaxy would you try to pit the corrs against each other like this? You have me confused these days.
We haven't had a single corr yetwho hasn't done their utmost to keep the devs informed of what the participants in these forums want. Not a single one has pushed their own agenda over that of the majority. I thought we were all done with the mentality of blamingthe corrs for the woes of our professions. They don't make the decisions. They don't sway the developers. They aren't the most popular in the group who everyone voted into office. From the time of Tiaga, Ravenmist and NewJedi to now, the corrs have done all they could to advance the wishes of the forum members - not kiss up to the devs for their own purposes.
I'm sorry, Sirii. I find your post to be mean spirited and ill thought out. Thereare no conspiracies going on behind the scenes here - no hidden agendas.
You have your wants for this professionand you have the right to express them as we all do; but to do so in a manner that attempts to demean and undermine the position of our correspondents is just not something I cannot accept or stay quiet about. I'm disappointed.
Kirah, if you wish to take issue with me on this, that is your right. I did not create this thread in order to bash our corrs. I created this thread so I can find out which corr I can work with.
But when we first heard the plans the developers had for these professions, we heard absolutely nothing from our corrs that even remotely indicated that they even cared about our position on BF. It looked more like a "PR campaign" designed to "sell us a bill of goods" that we neither wanted, nor cared for.
What has resulted was a divided community, and a hostile community. Many, many of our members and patrons as well felt left out of the process. As the poster above said, and I believe with some truth, "I do think you need to state a LOT louder that some enterainers want BF to remain."
The fact of the matter is, I have no evidence that the corrs even made the attempt. In fact, the only evidence I have are the corrs trying to sell us on the wisdom of eliminating BF.
Since the time of this thread, I have had a few conversations withone of our corrsconcerning our position on BF. I better understand now the direction the developers are trying to take us.
Their position is wrong. I conveyed to our correxactly what the problem was with the developer theory.
So in a sense, this thread has served its purpose. Because of the existance of this thread, I was able to get in contact with a corr in order to articulate the position of many concerning the changes. What we need as a profession from our corrs is not anarm of the developers' PR machine. If they wish to convince us about the wisdom of their changes, the developersneed to come here themselves.
So I am going to do what I think is right. We will not be led by a corr. We will be served by a corr.
Panthu wrote:
I heard Lilo was really one of Warryyr's alts.... as is Scip, soooooo....
Shhhhh...
PoetDancer wrote:
Kirah, if you wish to take issue with me on this, that is your right. I did not create this thread in order to bash our corrs. I created this thread so I can find out which corr I can work with.
But when we first heard the plans the developers had for these professions, we heard absolutely nothing from our corrs that even remotely indicated that they even cared about our position on BF. It looked more like a "PR campaign" designed to "sell us a bill of goods" that we neither wanted, nor cared for.
What has resulted was a divided community, and a hostile community. Many, many of our members and patrons as well felt left out of the process. As the poster above said, and I believe with some truth, "I do think you need to state a LOT louder that some enterainers want BF to remain."
The fact of the matter is, I have no evidence that the corrs even made the attempt. In fact, the only evidence I have are the corrs trying to sell us on the wisdom of eliminating BF.
Since the time of this thread, I have had a few conversations withone of our corrsconcerning our position on BF. I better understand now the direction the developers are trying to take us.
Their position is wrong. I conveyed to our correxactly what the problem was with the developer theory.
So in a sense, this thread has served its purpose. Because of the existance of this thread, I was able to get in contact with a corr in order to articulate the position of many concerning the changes. What we need as a profession from our corrs is not anarm of the developers' PR machine. If they wish to convince us about the wisdom of their changes, the developersneed to come here themselves.
So I am going to do what I think is right. We will not be led by a corr. We will be served by a corr.
These statements alone are adversarial. How can you say things like this about our Corrs? Have you been one? Do you expect them to report everything they discuss in the Corr forums, because they CAN'T due to an NDA.
You can work with any Correspondent you like. They are to represent anyone's opinions who voices them. You voiced yours. Great. But don't for a minute think you're fooling me that this isn't a Corr bashing thread - LOOK at what you wrote. You're bashing the Correspondents, which does nobody ANY good.
Honestly, though - don't think for a second that the Devs will decide to do or not to do anything simply because PoetDancer said not to, or all three Entertainer Correspondents said not to, or 99% of the Entertainer population said not to.
The Devs make changes to this game as they see fit, based on their vision of it. We have input and some influence, but if it involves something on a large game scale than just us, they do what they have to.
If players dictated what happened to this game and how it evolved, I think this game would be in a much worse state than it is.
I remain fully confident that if they are removing something as critical as BF has been to our role, it will be compensated accordingly in our gameplay. If, however, their plans are revealed and it's completely unsatisfactory to me, I will voice my opinions on the matter.
Just like the calling for removal of our skill points, I think this thread is premature. We don't know the "big plan" yet, only parts of it...and campaigning against something's removal without knowing it's real replacement could just be counterproductive.
I'm not saying don't voice your opinion against the removal of BF, but I don't think it's healthy for the community to get riled up and demand one of the Correspondents take sides for or against BF removal. If they're all for it's removal, or if they're all against, it doesn't matter - they report the opinions voiced to them by their community, and the Devs do with those opinions as they wish.