Entertainer Archive
Thread: Yet another idea to stop AFK'ers and Buffbots (file under: Ignored by Devs)
Darkcrest
Thu Jul 01, 2004 4:24 am
#14
I totally disagree have you been to player cities and regualr cities outside of coronet and theed 90% are empty at the moment. I created a master dancer for my city just so we have someone there to heal guildies and residents minds/fatigue take that away and it would hurt our city because perosonally I cant be around 22-23 hours a day to even think about checking my character every 30 minutes.
and too be honest alot of people depend on afkers for a quick heal after a hunt or quest you take that away youll have more people ummm for a nice way of putting it really really upset about this then just a few disgruntled dancers and musicians who feel they are losing business in coronet. if you really want to make money hit a cantina on dathomire or dantooine peaople will tip better and will be happy they wont have to go to coronet to use an afker.
thats my 2 cents take it or leave it
Ybagi
Thu Jul 01, 2004 8:07 am
#15
Warryyr wrote:
Darkcrest wrote:
I totally disagree have you been to player cities and regualr cities outside of coronet and theed 90% are empty at the moment. I created a master dancer for my city just so we have someone there to heal guildies and residents minds/fatigue take that away and it would hurt our city because perosonally I cant be around 22-23 hours a day to even think about checking my character every 30 minutes.
and too be honest alot of people depend on afkers for a quick heal after a hunt or quest you take that away youll have more people ummm for a nice way of putting it really really upset about this then just a few disgruntled dancers and musicians who feel they are losing business in coronet. if you really want to make money hit a cantina on dathomire or dantooine peaople will tip better and will be happy they wont have to go to coronet to use an afker.
thats my 2 cents take it or leave it
No profession in this game was ever meant to be played completely AFK 22-23 hours per day. Entertainers can be made to do this, not only for the benefit of THEMSELVES, but to provide something to the player base that ATK Entertainers SHOULD be providing.
I think if the AFK'ers went away, you'd be surprised at how many live Entertainers play this game. RIght now, you probably just can't see them through the 4000 AFK Entertainers in the front room spamming about tips and heals.
There is more than 1 cantina in this game people, get out see the sites.
Tralmek
Thu Jul 01, 2004 8:41 am
#16
It's dirty money, I'm not accepting it, thank-you.
Darkcrest wrote:
I totally disagree have you been to player cities and regualr cities outside of coronet and theed 90% are empty at the moment. I created a master dancer for my city just so we have someone there to heal guildies and residents minds/fatigue take that away and it would hurt our city because perosonally I cant be around 22-23 hours a day to even think about checking my character every 30 minutes.
and too be honest alot of people depend on afkers for a quick heal after a hunt or quest you take that away youll have more people ummm for a nice way of putting it really really upset about this then just a few disgruntled dancers and musicians who feel they are losing business in coronet. if you really want to make money hit a cantina on dathomire or dantooine peaople will tip better and will be happy they wont have to go to coronet to use an afker.
thats my 2 cents take it or leave it
Warryyr
Thu Jul 01, 2004 9:01 am
#17
Ybagi wrote:
Warryyr wrote:
Darkcrest wrote:
I totally disagree have you been to player cities and regualr cities outside of coronet and theed 90% are empty at the moment. I created a master dancer for my city just so we have someone there to heal guildies and residents minds/fatigue take that away and it would hurt our city because perosonally I cant be around 22-23 hours a day to even think about checking my character every 30 minutes.
and too be honest alot of people depend on afkers for a quick heal after a hunt or quest you take that away youll have more people ummm for a nice way of putting it really really upset about this then just a few disgruntled dancers and musicians who feel they are losing business in coronet. if you really want to make money hit a cantina on dathomire or dantooine peaople will tip better and will be happy they wont have to go to coronet to use an afker.
thats my 2 cents take it or leave it
No profession in this game was ever meant to be played completely AFK 22-23 hours per day. Entertainers can be made to do this, not only for the benefit of THEMSELVES, but to provide something to the player base that ATK Entertainers SHOULD be providing.
I think if the AFK'ers went away, you'd be surprised at how many live Entertainers play this game. RIght now, you probably just can't see them through the 4000 AFK Entertainers in the front room spamming about tips and heals.
There is more than 1 cantina in this game people, get out see the sites.
Hey, I agree. The thing is, though - there ARE a lot of empty cantinas outside of the big cities. I think the reasoning mentioned above for having a buffbot/AFK'er for a player cantina shows how the Devs' inattention to the Entertainer professions has propagated this attitude of "if i can't find one, i'll just start another account and make it an entertainer."
What they should have done AGES ago, when player cantinas were put in the game, is make a system - accessible from from every cantina, NPC or player - where player cantina owners can solicit entertainers to come play in their cities. The inherent problem of "not being able to find an entertainer" needs to be looked at and corrected, not allowed to fester. Then people in Theed and Coronet could get out of that mess, make some good money from another player, and play a gig somewhere. It would be like a player initiated mission. Upon playing for the set amount of time requested in the "mission" you get the payout and you are free to leave. Player cantina events would have a convenient way of hiring entertainers. Players could "hire" an entertainer to come to a certain cantina and heal them if no one's around. It would vastly improve this game for both entertainers and their customers.
They should have also allowed for NPC placement within player cantinas, to give the place some atmosphere. When you walk in one and it's just totally empty, it looks pretty sad.
Xyrdre
Thu Jul 01, 2004 10:07 am
#18
Well, the obvious answer to "I can't find an entertainer" is to improve the player search functions.
And what of the argument that "I can't find an entertainer wherever I amat 3 a.m., so this validates bots"? What if one couldn't find a doc at 3 am, in every med center on 10 worlds in the galaxy. Why don't we ever hear these people complaining "The Sarlaac spit a bunch of disease at me... and there wasn't a doc in every single med center to heal my disease, so live doc players are useless"? Becauseit's ridiculous to expect a doc player to sit in the med center at Wayfar the whole day and night wondering if maybe someone might stumble along in the middle of the night after getting the Sarlaac badge. Yet these same people think that this is what live entertainer players should be doing, in every cantina, player or static city, everywhere, all the time. Never mind the entertainer player's fun - you "lazy whiny entertainers" have to be here to cater to my whims at all times.
But if the system easily allowed for AFK docs to sit and heal your wounds, diseases, cure poisons and buff completely unattended, they'd be in the same boat as us. And I'm really glad that the docs don't have to live with what we go through with this... they are spared some great injustices.
One of our hugeproblems is the recursive macro. It almost completelyinvalidates the playing ofone basic and two elite professions. Lobby for an end to the recursive macro, because without the recursive macro, unattended timers and pop-ups become moot points.
Tralmek
Thu Jul 01, 2004 10:29 am
#19
At the risk of sounding Yodaish here...There is another way to AFK macro without a recursive macro. We need to seal up every possible route to AFK macroers, and perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to add a popup with a random code to continue playing. This would prevent people from AFK macroing with in-game macros as well as preventing them from using 3rd party macros.
mmm, check your PM's, Deila. I sent a message explaining what I mean about other ways to create a LAMer macro. I didn't want to post it here because I don't want to give AFK macroers a head start on making new macros to get around a system without recursive macros.
Message Edited by Tralmek on 07-01-2004 11:39 AM
Xyrdre
Thu Jul 01, 2004 11:10 am
#20
Yep... saw your PM, Lilo, and I agree. This thing really needs to be fixed on all fronts if we're going to turn entertainment back into a viable set of professions again.
sweatyclimber
Fri Jul 02, 2004 12:23 am
#21
Zdex wrote:
What is the big problem with AFK buffers? You do not get the same service from non afkers. I just posted some where else about this too. This is getting rediculous with the whining about a service that you probably yourself used at one time. If you don't like the service, don't use it, quit whining about it. This game has so many whiners in it, no wonder they keep nerfing every single profession.
and add one more... someone who whines about the whiners
Red-Dwarf
Wed Jul 07, 2004 5:51 am
#22
An alternative idea for consideration:
Addition to game of the AFK2 state (to be renamed - possibly "Abandoned")
AFK2 to trigger automatically after 30 minutes of no player input (similar to current Auto-AFK) but this time cannot be amended nor turned off by player.
While in AFK2 state one or more of the following events/conditions to be applied (depends on extent AFK playing is to be removed from the game)
1) Auto disconnect from game to login screen
2) Auto run the /dump command (will then use current afk trigger to log out in 5min)
3) Alarm sound on client to alert owner if they are near keyboard.
4) Disallow selected commands (use the berserk programming, i.e. "You cannot healenhance while AFK2"), commands to be considered: /attack, /healenhance, /invite, /join, /flourish, /startmusic, /startdance, /setperform, /tenddamage, /survey
5) Implement xp blocker (similar programming to caps on xp "You cannot earn experience points while AFK2")
6) Auto activate the AFK message and tag (and remove capability to turn off)
Obviously some of us want the option 1 to be activated while some would prefer just the option 6 (which would make sure the new AFK chat option actually silences the 'merchant' barkers at starports) but the devs are the ones to make that judgement.
Since Pex has at least visited the forum someone has noticed us, let's try to keep Warryyr and the paid dev's and volunteer correspondents full of ideas to improve the professions.
Thanks for reading
Senom
Miravlix
Wed Jul 07, 2004 9:51 am
#23
I think most people is taking the afk issue to far.
Only thing that needed changing is that buffs should be an attended feature, just like buffing for dos require attended work, ID'ing requires attended work.
For the last week I've been camping my servers Theed cantina, when my friend and me started doing musician/dancer theed was empty every day for a few hours, but since we started there, it now has more than 20+ entertainers sometimes. I consider it a game breaking feature that it's hard to find mind wound healing, so I will accept that this works /afk, I know a lot of people consider being unbuffed game breaking, but I don't agree with this, the game is playable unbuffed, it just have to be approched in a diffrent way.
The same issues exist with medical Centers and it can be an issue finding wound healing there, most Medical Centers is empty most of the day, so when I've done having fun with entertainer I'm going to work on a wound healing bot that I can put in normaly empty Medical Centers.
Only thing that needed changing is that buffs should be an attended feature, just like buffing for dos require attended work, ID'ing requires attended work.
For the last week I've been camping my servers Theed cantina, when my friend and me started doing musician/dancer theed was empty every day for a few hours, but since we started there, it now has more than 20+ entertainers sometimes. I consider it a game breaking feature that it's hard to find mind wound healing, so I will accept that this works /afk, I know a lot of people consider being unbuffed game breaking, but I don't agree with this, the game is playable unbuffed, it just have to be approched in a diffrent way.
The same issues exist with medical Centers and it can be an issue finding wound healing there, most Medical Centers is empty most of the day, so when I've done having fun with entertainer I'm going to work on a wound healing bot that I can put in normaly empty Medical Centers.
ShadowProject
Sun Jul 11, 2004 1:19 am
#24
Holo grinding is at an end. We should see the number of AFK entertainers drop, assuming most were grinding for Jedi.
Here is my solution to the whole dang thing:
If you don't think it is right for an entertainer to be afk for long periods of time, or if you don't think Buff Bots are cool, ignore them. Don't use the AFK entertainer to heal your wounds or BF, don't use a buff bot, and don't tip them.
Personally, I go AFK all the time when I entertain. When ever I go to work or school, I simply leave my character entertaining. I don't join any enertainer groups, I don't ask to be tipped, and I'm in a corner out of the way.
If you don't like it, shove off and go find an entertainer that isn't AFK.
Which reminds me, I better go stop my character, who's been AFK entertaining for the last 6 hours. It's time for bed for him.
ShadowProject
Sun Jul 11, 2004 3:13 pm
#25
Well, most of the time if I am home, I am on the computer getting pistol XP for smuggler. I just don't understand why people spend so much time crying over afk entertainers. Face it, unless you view SWG as a $15 a month interactive chat room, entertainer, muscian, ID, and dancer are just plain boring. You sit in a cantina and do nothing but chat, and do flourishes. Some people want the skills to heal wounds and buff minds for the guild or to earn money, but don't understand why they have to pay rapt attention to the computer if their character can function just fine with out any input from the characters.
And my final argument: these AFK entertainers pay their $15 bucks a month just like you (some even pay more than that because it is their 2nd or 3rd character on that server). If they want to spend their $15 bucks a month so they can run the game while they are not there in front of it to play it, let 'em. It's their money. Go kill a torton and get on with your life.
Schardour
Sun Jul 11, 2004 5:02 pm
#26
Credit dupers pay their $15 a month to sit there and cheat, clone campers spend their $15 a month to get their kicks griefing another player. They negatively effect the economy and PvP. Why should a practice that negatively effects two professions be any more commendable than those?