Entertainer Archive
Thread: For discussion: What should being an entertainer be?
I can think of two primaryaspects to the entertainer professions, both of which need some work.
1) The social entertainer. Play-style in which the entertainer engages group-mates or cantina patrons in conversation. In the beginning, most entertainers fell under this category. Now, only a small number do. While many patrons prefer afk entertainers (whether to avoid tips, or just to avoid chatting), there are still some patrons who would greatly prefer active entertainers.
Possible solution? Perhaps an alteration to the cantina registration code could be introduced in which afk and atk entertainers could be differentiated. Granted, registration itself is ineffective now, but the ability to identify one's self as an at-the-keyboard entertainer or an afk entertainer would help the various groups of people find one another.
2) The solo entertainer. Not everyone wants to stand in the same cantina day after day, and many of the out-of-the-way cities/planets could make use ofan entertainer. Unfortunately, there is usually no reason at all to even bother buying a shuttle ticket. As has been noted in previous posts, there's simply no benefit to the entertainerin goingto an infrequently visited cantina; there is no experience for those in search of it, nor is there sufficient social interaction for those seeking that.
Possible solution? This is a tough one. There's really no way to solve the lack of socialization, though hopefully those seeking such would already be finding some benefit from the registration system mentioned in part 1. For those seeking experience or money? Well, it seems like we're looking at improved entertainer missions to me. Missions that provide comparable experience (healing andmusic/dance) to performing and a reasonable amount of credits might actually make it enjoyable enough to leave one's planet and profitable enough to afford a ticket home.
I also considered proposing mini-games (casino or otherwise)with increased payouts in low population areas, but I'm not sure if theSWG codehas a method of tracking the number of players in a zone. If it does, the added benefit would be that all "gambling" characters would have a reason to visit unpopulated cities, perhaps reducing the ghost town phenomenon a smidge.
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In any case, I care deeply for the entertainer professions, but only the entertainer professions that are living in my memory. At present, I have absolutely no fun at all when I log on, and have all but stopped doing so. The reason for this has nothing to do with the entertainer's skills, abilities, or overall code. It has everything to do with lack of socialization. Taking for granted the fact that nothing will ever be done to remove the ability to engage in unattended gameplay, some tool for finding other like-minded people would go a long way.
Combat characters and medics can always find a pickup group, but this has become difficult for entertainers. If one could log on and run a search for cantinas in thegalaxy staffed solely by at-the-keyboard entertainers, a little bit of travel time might provide an illusion that the gold 'ole days still exist. We'd be out of the afkers way, and they'd be out of ours. In theory.
Anyway, that's about all I can come up with at the moment. Cheers. 
EQ is a fantastic online game. You don't live in that world, you play a game in it. You hunt and get gear and all the rest. There is very little in EQ that doesn't serve some useful purpose in the game of combat, which is what EQ really is about.
SWG is more of an online world. There are things in SWG that have no use, that don't serve any real purpose. Furniture, clothing, artwork and a bunch of other things have no real purpose in the world except to add 'color' and make the world more interesting and realistic.
Players tend to fall within these two camps too. There are players that are simply playing the game. Their purpose is to become powerful or rich, to find success and everything they do is aimed at a goal. The quest for Jedi is a perfect example. There are other players who will spend hours decorating their house...and then the next day tear it all down and redecorate. Or they'll travel to see Obi-Wan's home, or sit in a cantina and chat.
Of course, it's not black and white, it's a sliding scale and players shift on that scale constantly.
Entertainers have two aspects that fit into these two roles as well. There's our healing and buffing role which fits squarely into the first camp, and then there's everything else about us that fits into the second. People who play entertainers are even further divided. There are those who are simply playing these professions as a game, and the point of the game is to reach mastery as fast as they can, or to heal and buff the combat folks. Then there are the others, who view this less of a game then as a part of the world. They would say we're not there solely to cure wounds, but to actually entertain, to spread rumors, to make people laugh and to enhance the online experience beyond simple success on a battlefield.
So the question remains, what are we? I choose to believe our profession was meant to add color and character to the world, and that our relevance to the 'game side' in terms of healing and buffs was a way to force the rest of the population to notice us. Ideally this would provide balance, but they have overdone the 'useful' side of us and neglected the 'color and character' side of us, and naturally this has resulted in a dramatic player shift towards the 'game' end of the spectrum resulting in a terrible imbalance.
So, what should being an entertainer mean? It means we exist to make this a more interesting and fun world to be in. In as much as I feel that is the goal, I feel that these professions currently are a dramatic failure.
- J
Tiaga, you wanted someone who doesn't enjoy the profession, (and doesnt really know much about its current issues) I'm you're guy!
With your leave, and the confession up front that I'm currently a holo-grinder entertainer, I'll put 2 cents in:
I like what the 2nd poter said about being rewarded for being entertaining, but the system as is, is NOT very entertaining. The only thing that could be called "entertaining" about watching a group of entertainers right now is the social interaction (I can hear the knuckles cracking now, as I'm a confessed occasional AFKer, and defender of AFKers everywhere).
But consider this: What if you could be rewarded for being entertaining rather than dancing or playing music?
I'll confess right now, I don't have a perfect answer, but COULD it possibly be made so that you get minimal ent xp for just dancing/playing/flourishing, but more xp based on how ENTERTAINING you are to the ppl on the other side of their keyboards? (Sorry if this idea has been brought up before, I'm new to these boards).
For example: A novice entertainer could, in certain places (cantinas, hotels, guild halls, etc) go into a "performing mode" kinda like how a TKA can "Meditate". The entertainer could then entertain however they wanted; small talk with battle-weary players, stand up comedy (just telling *clean* jokes in chat), or the usual song and dance. THEN maybe while in that "entertaining state", the entertainer gets awarded xp based on the audience's response...number of /cheers, /bravos, etc directed at that entertainer or group. That may also help the better <social> entertainers get a name for themselves. "Hey, PlayerX is hilarious, we should book him for our hunt Friday!" (sorry if too corny!)
Now I know that may be EASILY exploitable, by ppl with frinds willing to set up a /cheer macro or something, but it's just an idea. I leave it to those who like the profession to work out the details and avoid the pitfalls. I was thinking though that this may also help with your AFK "zombie" "problem". It may give incentive for ppl to stay at their keyboard and interact with the audience and other entertainers, like the true entertainers already do.
Again, apologies if this is an old idea. Just wanted to try to contribute.
tizodd wrote:but COULD it possibly be made so that you get minimal ent xp for just dancing/playing/flourishing, but more xp based on how ENTERTAINING you are to the ppl on the other side of their keyboards? (Sorry if this idea has been brought up before, I'm new to these boards).
The flaw in this is that you have confused the abilities of the character with the abilities of the player. An entertainer is not entertaining the other players in terms of game mechanics (xp), it is entertaining the other characters.
In combat, your character doesn't do more physical damage to his target because you did a really good job of pressing "bodyshot2". He just does the damage based on a mathematical formula and based on his own abilities. This is what separates a roleplaying game from a twitch-game like Quake III: the character has the abilities, not the player, in a RPG.
It is not appropriate to expect or require players of entertainer characters to entertain the players of other characters. What IS appropriate is to expect the entertainer PC to do things that would (if roleplayed properly) normally entertain the audience PC(s).
One thing is certain: if they did anything remotely like what I suggest, the designers would definitely need to make sure the keep in mind the distinction between the player and the character.
C
While I see your point, Chessack, my thinking was this:
Real entertainers play SWG as entertainers, because the social interaction is what they want. They WANT to be entertaining. So I thought maybe the majority of the real entertainers might be willing to go along with that. Also, I'm not saying it should be twitch based as far as dancing via hand-eye coordination. I'm saying people that are truly entertaining in-game are entertaining in real life too. Fun ppl to be around, to talk to, etc.
Heck underwith my proposal above, you could have a hybrid class made up of Domestic arts 4 plus entertainer called "Bartender" (Bartender would relate to Chef as CM relates to Doctor). And the bartender could "perform" and be given xp by simply holding interesting conversations with patrons. Like in real life almost.
I know I'm generalizing, and yes, I do see the flaws in my proposals. You're right about them of course. Just brainstorming. Thanks for the resopnse.
In a roleplaying games those are the two things that ought never to be confused.
It should not be necessary for the player of a pistoleer to have ever used, picked up, handled, or know anything at all about guns in order to play a pistoleer successfully. That's because the character has the skills.
It should not be required that the player of a doctor or a medic know human anatomy and physiology, the pathology of infectious diseases, the technical names for medical terms, or anything else medical in order to play a medic successfully. That's because the character went to medical school, not the player.
By the same token, it should ont be required that the player of an entertainer be good personally at telling jokes, singing songs, making up poems, or any other player-based entertainment thing. If they had a comedian class, they'd need a /joke command that gave automated, pre-written, automatically funny (to the other characters, whatever the players think) jokes. Why? Because you should not have to be a real life comedian in order to play a game comedian.
In a roleplaying game what matters in terms of the character's ability to succeed at something the character is good at, are the skills and abilities of the character not those of the player. Players get to make the tactical decisions (deciding which specials to do when), but they don't control how good their character is at executing their orders -- the skill system determines that.
My thinking is with regard to analogy. By analogy with what a carbineer or TKA does, what should matter is the tactics of dance moves, etc. That is, your ability to successfully entertain should depend on the order in which you do the moves, just like your ability to successfully take down a Fambaa depends on the order of your specials. But that "success" is not in terms of other players. The success is in terms of other characters.
Think about PVP. When your TKA does PVP against my Carbineer, and you do things in the proper order (using Tiaga's example: Warcry, knockdown, kick kick kick), you win. My character is incapacitated. But I, the player, am just fine and healthy. You can't knock me, personally, down. You can't make me bleed, or do a head shot to me personally. Only to my character.
Entertainment has to be the same way in order for the game to be consistent. Otherwise, TKAs should only succeed if their players can physically enter my house and physically knock me down first. Sound ridiculous? Then why should an entertainer be required to make you, the player, laugh, in order to get XP?
And as a note: we already get more xp when (a) more people watch us, and (b) people cheer and applaud. It's a tiny bonus and not related to healing but knowledge. Nevertheless that type of system already exists. As near as I can tell it's more or less useless and nobody bothers to applaud or cheer except my good friends, who are doing it because they mean it, not so I can get xp. (Usually because as a master ent I am playing ceremonial and everyone seems to love that song, including me.)
There is a very sharp, unambiguous line between the player and the character. That line must never become blurred or forgotten. When it is, RPGs suffer. This is a long-known fact since the early days of D+D. They must be kept separate.
C
There are many aspects of the game at the moment that have no "useful value" and are more respected than entertainer. Here, I focus on the aspect of entertainer unrelated to healing or buffing.
- Architect. There is no "reason" to have pretty city buildings, furniture, etc - but people want these things and buy them because it creates a rp experience. People will hire interior designers to do their houses (ugh, I need one!) because they want a nice experience.
- Merchant: One of the most popular features is dressing your vendors. Why? To take pride in your shop, and make people more likely to shop there. And it works, people are affected by aesthetics.
- Tailor: Yes there are bioengineered clothes, but most of my business comes from regular pretty things, and not just from the entertainer types either. And not just the women, moreover! Why not run around in your noob clothes, or something very cheap? Because clothes add to the roleplay, they are status, and people want them. People will travel 2 planets to come see my clothes because (in their view) I'm better than the closer tailors. Imagine: a set number of patterns and colors, and they find my "designs" to be the best. Expertise matters.
- Image Designer: I can do barely anything outside character creation. There is no "useful" function for image design. After the "elite hairdo" craze died down, there was really no "status symbol" issue with hair. But I get a lot of clients, not just women, who want a change. And most of them are exceedingly polite, to the point of groveling. Again, this is a time when "skill matters" - they don't just want a change, they want someone who has been doing this for a long time to make the changes and give advice. The avatar is important to who they are in the world, and they go out of their way to tip extremely well - even though everyone by now knows that image design is incredibly easy to grind to master, but extremely difficult to truly "master."
These comparisons show that many other professions are well-respected despite the fact that some ofthe goods/services being supplied are aesthetic in nature. In these professions, you gain a reputation through expertise - and it pays off to be a master for a long time in order to be able to provide a superior service/product.
Why don't we have that same respect in entertainer? Do people not watch closely enough to recognize well-timed flourishes? Do people turn the volume completely off to not listen to our compositions? In other aesthetic (or partially-aesthetic) professions, the endgame is the "more than mastery" part of the profession: learning the profession inside and out, and using the tools of your profession so that you have a better "product" than a recent master - or a grinding master - who has no idea how to play the class. How can we get people to appreciate bands with actual compositions, not people playing flourishes 1-8 in a row and then repeating?
So I ask - what is the difference between a "good" entertainer and a "bad" entertainer andhow do we get people to tell and appreciatethe difference.
Now a note about image design:
I've noticed we're not talking much about image design, and I don't think we really should. As it stands now, the image design tree in entertaineris a conduit to the profession, and in general, has different issues which are better addressed by the image design forums. A few thoughts on image design:
- Most people who become master entertainers are not interested in image design rewards, but are interested in the dancing/music aspect of entertainer. I think the current system which gives no rewards for image design in the entertainer tree is probably a good one:
- lack of "new" content in image design profession, leaving profession not "fully functional" if abilities moved to master entertainer. This could be reevaluated when we get some new image design content
- one tree versus two trees. As a musician, you already need to master 2 trees, so another 2 won't hurt too badly. Putting any image design in master entertainer would be a major point suck for image designers.
- Other professions do not necessarily have a reward for every tree in master (i.e. master artisan, no tailoring schematics).
- With that said, I would like to see the image design line of entertainer be self-sufficient so it's a reward in itself, and not just a conduit to the mandeviol. At this time, the entertainer image design abilities are useful to humans and virtually useless to other races. For example, humans can change hair color, but twi'leks cannot change spot color until way up the image design line. However, at this time, there is not enough content in image design in general to justify moving all the things that people might want to change(frequently)into the entertainer tree. This would leave image designers without a viable profession, if all they could change were facial features and body features. This discussion, however, I think is definitely worth revisiting once image designers receive new content and current content can then be moved to different skill boxes.
Chessak,
I am not confusing the difference between player and character. I get what you're saying 100%. I was only suggesting that maybe due to the nature of entertaining, and the reasons so many real entertainers get upset with afkers, they may be interested in going a more unconventional route with their profession that MAY help to make it #1, more immersive and reward real entertainers and #2, possibly take away the motivation of the afkers they dislike so much. It was just a thought. I wonder if everyone else is as against "blurring the lines" as yu when it comes to the entertainer profession. I don't mean to sound argumenative, but was simply trying to share ideas to broaden discussion, and Tiaga asked for the perspective of someone who didn't like the profession.
Thanks for you response, but no need to further delineate the difference. I understood from the beginning.
In my experience, at any rate, entertainers seemed generally to be the very last group (as a whole) to become "guilded" on my server. Fighters were the first -- they had to band together to take down big things. Scouts joined guilds at the same time. But early on it was rare to see non-fighter, non-scout types in guilds. Then crafters started joining guilds -- either with each other, to help farm resources, or with fighters/scouts. Fighter/scouts provide hides, bone, etc, crafters craft items... symbiosis. Still the dancers and musicians and so forth were in the cantinas, mostly unguilded.
Then, little by little, the entertainers started joining guilds. And as each guild hired its little entertainer or two, guild members stopped showing up in towns, leaving cantinas more and more empty... leading to more and more entertainers joining guilds because there was nobody left to heal in the outside world.
For myself, I know that I stuck in Keren until around the time player cities formed. At that point Keren died. Everyone who had used it joined one of 3 nearby towns, and I realy had no other choice. So I joined a guild of nice friendly people that I had gotten to know in Keren, and joined their city as well.
I can't say I regret the move, and the guild cantina is often a more hopping place even than Theed. But you are right, it is with 90% members of the guild and town, and I meet very few strangers in there.
I think what happened, at least in part, is that the guilds and player cities took the patrons away first... and as a result the entertainers left -- either quitting, or joining guilds because they really had no other choice.
C
NJ62 wrote:
There are many aspects of the game at the moment that have no "useful value" and are more respected than entertainer. Here, I focus on the aspect of entertainer unrelated to healing or buffing.
- Architect. There is no "reason" to have pretty city buildings, furniture, etc - but people want these things and buy them because it creates a rp experience. People will hire interior designers to do their houses (ugh, I need one!) because they want a nice experience.
- Merchant: One of the most popular features is dressing your vendors. Why? To take pride in your shop, and make people more likely to shop there. And it works, people are affected by aesthetics.
- Tailor: Yes there are bioengineered clothes, but most of my business comes from regular pretty things, and not just from the entertainer types either. And not just the women, moreover! Why not run around in your noob clothes, or something very cheap? Because clothes add to the roleplay, they are status, and people want them. People will travel 2 planets to come see my clothes because (in their view) I'm better than the closer tailors. Imagine: a set number of patterns and colors, and they find my "designs" to be the best. Expertise matters.
- Image Designer: I can do barely anything outside character creation. There is no "useful" function for image design. After the "elite hairdo" craze died down, there was really no "status symbol" issue with hair. But I get a lot of clients, not just women, who want a change. And most of them are exceedingly polite, to the point of groveling. Again, this is a time when "skill matters" - they don't just want a change, they want someone who has been doing this for a long time to make the changes and give advice. The avatar is important to who they are in the world, and they go out of their way to tip extremely well - even though everyone by now knows that image design is incredibly easy to grind to master, but extremely difficult to truly "master."
These comparisons show that many other professions are well-respected despite the fact that some ofthe goods/services being supplied are aesthetic in nature. In these professions, you gain a reputation through expertise - and it pays off to be a master for a long time in order to be able to provide a superior service/product.
Why don't we have that same respect in entertainer? Do people not watch closely enough to recognize well-timed flourishes? Do people turn the volume completely off to not listen to our compositions? In other aesthetic (or partially-aesthetic) professions, the endgame is the "more than mastery" part of the profession: learning the profession inside and out, and using the tools of your profession so that you have a better "product" than a recent master - or a grinding master - who has no idea how to play the class. How can we get people to appreciate bands with actual compositions, not people playing flourishes 1-8 in a row and then repeating?
So I ask - what is the difference between a "good" entertainer and a "bad" entertainer andhow do we get people to tell and appreciatethe difference.
Now a note about image design:
I've noticed we're not talking much about image design, and I don't think we really should. As it stands now, the image design tree in entertaineris a conduit to the profession, and in general, has different issues which are better addressed by the image design forums. A few thoughts on image design:
- Most people who become master entertainers are not interested in image design rewards, but are interested in the dancing/music aspect of entertainer. I think the current system which gives no rewards for image design in the entertainer tree is probably a good one:
- lack of "new" content in image design profession, leaving profession not "fully functional" if abilities moved to master entertainer. This could be reevaluated when we get some new image design content
- one tree versus two trees. As a musician, you already need to master 2 trees, so another 2 won't hurt too badly. Putting any image design in master entertainer would be a major point suck for image designers.
- Other professions do not necessarily have a reward for every tree in master (i.e. master artisan, no tailoring schematics).
- With that said, I would like to see the image design line of entertainer be self-sufficient so it's a reward in itself, and not just a conduit to the mandeviol. At this time, the entertainer image design abilities are useful to humans and virtually useless to other races. For example, humans can change hair color, but twi'leks cannot change spot color until way up the image design line. However, at this time, there is not enough content in image design in general to justify moving all the things that people might want to change(frequently)into the entertainer tree. This would leave image designers without a viable profession, if all they could change were facial features and body features. This discussion, however, I think is definitely worth revisiting once image designers receive new content and current content can then be moved to different skill boxes.
I think the reason the professions you highlighted receive more attention and/or respect from players is that they fit into the "achiever" spectrum as well as the "socializer" spectrum. By this I mean that they provide achievers with another metaphorical gold medallion to wear. If you own a house, you have achieved enough money to buy a house, thus it is an achievement you can flaunt; if you have a merchant at your shop, you have achieved something a novice artisan has not, and there is a visible representation of that achievement in the form of an npc; if you have accumulated multiple expensive outfits, those outfits distinguish your character from a newbie and demonstrate you've achieved another measure of success; having a human characterwith a seashell hairstyle is another little collectible the achiever can demonstrate (it hasa "perceptible value" becauseit is achieved only by paying a master image designer).
Combat characters and medics provide the achievers with survival skills they need to reach all areas of the game, as well as a means to prove their own superiority to other players. How does entertaining directly benefit achievers? Simply stated, it doesn't. There is no shiny bauble provided by entertainers, no means of demonstrating direct superiority to other players, no benefit other than socialization, which very few achievers seem to have any interest in whatsoever. The only thing entertainers can offer achievers is a mind buff, which has very little "bling-bling" appeal. Rather, it's a handy addition for riflemen that can easily be done without.
As designed, the entertainment professions lack any reward for achievers other than the temporary satisfaction of gaining a master title and the potential for opening a force sensitive character slot in so doing. I think it's safe to assume that this is because the entertainer professions were designed specifically, even solely, for socializers. Despite this fact, the vast majority of entertainers happen to be achievers at the moment. This is due to two things: a) the holocron system, and b) to a lesser degree, the requirement of a master title to place a cantina. Most player cities want a cantina, but master musician/dancers can be difficult to track down. As a result, many PAs have players who have achieved a master title simply to place a cantina.
So what are we left with? To be honest, I haven't a clue. The few remaining socializers among us, of which I am one, are left in an unbelievably antisocial profession. The many achievers among us have nothing of interest to do during their "forced" visit to our profession. Is the answer providing content for achievers in the hope that it will give them a reason to be at the keyboard and, in so doing, give socializers someone to talk to? I doubt it's as simple as that. We're in a neck-high mess that just seems to keep rising. I just hope the people being paid to solve the problem wake up soon, because no one is having a good time in this profession anymore.
To get some context: I have two accounts for my primary server, and I roleplay the accounts as two brothers. The younger brother does the Bounty Hunter thing, and basically I play him to get some shooting time. The older brother is a retired soldier who's taken up music and runs his own cantina(yes, THAT "Hive of Scum and Villainy Cantina"). The irony is, I spend a lot of my time on either character in that cantina, wondering why I get so few visitors and why everyone is constantly camping spawns.
I can only think of one reason, and it's the same reason why most every medical center out there is so underpopulated compared to the early days - we have no real service to offer that isn't provided in the field anyhow. We don't get the player anything for their time, so we have no impact at all. I can think of ways to improve us, but they come at a price and may just lead to further hologrinding.
The first would be to elevate the town size to allow cantinas. Make it so that only the most busy towns can have a cantina, driving the populations together more. Frankly, the number of towns has been a huge disincentive for population socialization already - it's not too much to ask people to drive 5 minutes to reach the nearest cantina and get entertained.
The second would be to make it so that you can only lose secondary mind wounds in cantinas, and that they can't be repaired in the field. This would push people to spend more time in the cantinas, because even though their primary HAM could be recovered, their regeneration would go down to 0 very quickly.
The third would be to let us have passive buffs that to modify skills somewhat. What if you got +1 accuracy for every 10 minutes you spent watching a band in a cantina, or a little defensive boost? If these buffs lasted an hour or so, they'd be very helpful to groups, and well worth spending time in a cantina. Keep this kind of thing OUT of camps.
The fourth would allow us to do more customization on our music and/or dancing. We need more instruments, and to have more influence on the music. Most certainly we can't generate a wide enough variety of sounds. We don't get enough percussion, nor enough woodwind, nor unique flavors like dulcimers. Why can't we have songs with several parts to be played by similar instruments? For example, one person takes melody, and there are 4 harmony tracks - and the musicians themselves decide what instrument plays which role? There needs to be more than flourishes and flashy lights to this setup...
The fifth, we should really be able to do more interesting things with our active buffs - more along the lines of what a doctor can already do. They spend time listening to us, they feel a little more spring to their step, or a little more power in their actions. I'm not asking for huge primary buffs, just little secondary buffs that aren't too overpowering. These would fade with time, so that the longer between their cantina visits, the less effective they are...
The sixth, we really need an effective way of motivating people to gather together. Cantinas should not have more entertainers than patrons. I can think of a bunch of ways to do this - I'm sort of a fan of adding more functionality to the Cantinas to begin with. Allow the Cantina's owner to get a free food-only vendor which they can drop chef-made food into, and have food eaten in a cantina give a little more effect(maybe a 5% boost). Add actual eating/drinking animations for roleplay. Let the cantina owner do things with lighting intensity and colors in the place(I want a dank hole, dang it!). Allow players to use Cantina bartenders as targeted drop boxes between players - Jack wants to leave a package for Jill, so all he does is hand it to the bartender with the person's name, and they pick it up later. No worries about who has admin permissions on a house, and so forth. 1 package in dropoff per player in the galaxy at a time.
The seventh, we need better ways to get people to places where entertainers are, and entertainers to the places where people are. Maybe set it up so that we can have player-sponsored missions to play specific venues. Players go into a cantina, pay into the entertainment account - every Novice or higher Musician and Dancer can access a list of places where there's an entertainment pool. When they go there, they register as a performer in the facility and get paid out of the account for time spent performing there. This helps to address the ugly lack of tips as well. As the money runs low, the entertainer gets to choose whether to stick with the location or to go where there's more money in it for them.
The eighth, we really ought to be able to reserve cantinas in NPC cities for blocks of a half hour at a time and have people pay a cover charge to get in. People are not tipping the entertainers as it is, and there needs to be a mechanism to compel some kind of compensation here. It takes 2 minutes to run a fast delivery mission for 50+ credits - a 20 credit cover isn't unreasonable.
Just some thoughts I hope the entertainment industry correspondents would push for on our behalf...