Entertainer Archive

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SlickRiptide wrote:
Why do we need game mechanics at all? Why do we have to offer buffs or healing or some other tangible benefit in order to attract an audience? Why aren't there vibrant cantinas in the player cities bustling with adventurers who are spending their pay on a few beers and a dance band, regardless of any meta-game reason to be there? Answer these questions and you've solved the entire entertainment problem.

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We need mechanics because we need to be "hooked in" to the game system and community. Why do we need a hook? Because we pay for it, in both real money (to the tune of $15/month) and in skill and experience points. The "you have to make your own content" thing doesn't wash when I am paying the same amount of money and skill points as the BH or Jedi or what have you who is getting all the dev attention. I mean, you could make the same arguments for any profession right? Why does a CH's pets need to be effective in combat? After all if the fun of CH is taming and having pets, can't they all be level 1 non-combat pets and CH still be a viable profession? The answer, of course, is no... because that CH is spending the same 63 SPs for his elite prof as the Swordsman is, and thus deserves as much 'game mechanic' support as the swordsman has. And while we're at it, why does a TKA master need to be able to tank or deal damage? I mean after all, aren't the TKA animations cool enough by themselves? Why should a TKA need any mechanics at all? The only reason people consider it implicit for social classes that they don't need mechanics is history -- social classes have never had any mechanics before, but healing, crafting, and combat classes have, so social classes "don't need them."

Sorry Slick, I like ya and you were a good correspondent and all, but I'm not buying that argument. The whole reason I object to the removal of BF and mind wounds is what it does to the entertainment profs, demoting them from a viable game prof with a role equal in function to that of a medic or a doctor, to a "hobby" profession, the way it would be in any other game that doesn't support the social playstyle (e.g. UO, EQ, you name it). The instant you take all in-game function away from it, you implicitly send the message to ALL players that "this class isn't a 'real' class -- it's a toy class." And that invalidates the whole profession and relegates it to just a hobby that a few nutcases fool with, rather than a full-fledged profession that is intended to participate in the game in its own right.

The devs need to make a choice. Either the social classes are hobbies, in which case they should be zero (or very few) SPs, serve no game role, and we leave it at that... allowing dancers or musicians to take up a "real" prof with their SPs. If they do this the devs have every right to freeze or severely limit entertainer content, because it costs no SPs anyway. Or, if they are going to charge full SPs, they need to make the prof relevant in game terms -- every bit as much as a doc or a swordsman is. The problem is, they're not doing either one, but an unworkable hybrid... very little (but still some trivial) in game function, full SP cost, little real development effort... they're walking in the middle of the road. And that's the problem. In the movie "Karate Kid", the teacher says, "Walk on road. Walk right side, safe. Walk left side, safe. Walk in middle, and sooner or later you get squished, just like a grape." The devs are in the middle of the road right now... and if they don't move to one side (no SPs) or the other (real game roles and contents for full-SP costing entertainers), then pretty soon the entertainers are all going to just leave, and... squish, just like a grape.

C

I have always had entertainer on my character, even my combat characters (I even refused to contemplate grinding FS when I realised Dancer 0040 would have to go to keep my level 80 and accomodate FS boxes). I left this game for a good 8 months for eq2. What bought me back? You got it -- entertaining. There is nothing like it in any other MMO. I wish the devs would appreciate that while most of the player base are all about combat, there are significant numbers of people out there who embrace the uniqueness of this profession. This is what brings some of us back to the game.

I suppose they are just so confident that they will keep getting new combatants all grinding away for Jedi to care about older players, returning players, who seek more than just then kill.

I think that the devs probably believe (and it's not shocking that they do) that the combat players do not respect entertainers and find them annoying.

That wasn't always the case, actually, though. In the beginning, before AFK macroing took over, even hardcore combatants appreciated entertainers and thought they were a pretty valuable part of the game. Oh sure there are always some who think we're "carebears", but it wasn't the majority who thought we were "useless" or a "waste of skill points." That didn't come until later -- when AFK macro-taining took over. The reason a lot of combat players started looking down their noses at Entertainers was because they started seeing almost nothing but AFK macro-bots, and they came to think that every entertainer was an AFK macroer. As I have always said, AFK macro-botting is the beginning, middle, and end of Entertainer problems. The devs had to make BF irrelevent and then take it away with the CU because players hated, not having to go to entertainers, but having to go to bots built by lazy players who were not bothering to even play the game. I don't blame the combat players for resenting AFK-tainers -- hell, I resent them myself.

As always, AFKing is the beginning and end of the problem... it's where the whole problem is at. The devs took BF away because they didn't want people to feel they "had" to come to us -- but people didn't resent having to come to us per se... rather, they resented having to go to an AFK macro-bot. Whenever I perform (live, of course, 100% of the time), there are hardcore combatants who will come into the cantina perhaps for other reasons (doing quests, etc) and when they see me actually at keyboard, they give me a big tip for playing my profession the way it was supposed to be played in the first place.

I think a lot of players would have been fine with "having" to go to entertainers, if they thought we played our own profession honestly and for real. That we could get to the top and do 100% of our job without risk and without even playing the game drove all the resentment that led to the devs having to take BF out of the game, and now having to try to find ways to make us relevent without being needed (good luck with that one -- IMO, it is impossible). If they would've just taken AFK macroing out of the game for once and for all, they would not have had the resentment problem in the first place, BF could've stayed, etc. But the devs don't think like that -- that is, logically.

C

Been a while since I've been on my computer, so log in, load IE, check forums.....holy cow! People posting on my link, lots of em!

I'm glad that there has been some talk over this even those opposed, I was worried that this would get buried. The truth of the matter and the "gist" of what I hope can come out of talking about it is a re-energizing of the profession. YES I still stand by my credo that "No entertainer is better than an AFK entertainer." Even at the effect of affecting the night-owls (btw, I don't know if anyone's noticed, but its in the wee-hours of darkness that you get some of your best live bands in the cantinas), it makes us important, a job that can't be done by some "bot." Even though we are almost completely inert properties in the game, I just want my fellow entertainers to take some pride in their profession, because we do make this game unique. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any other MMORPG has anything like us...

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SlickRiptide wrote:

It's interesting that you put it that way Chessack. From a certain perspective, it could be argued that entertainers have more tools for CREATING content than any other profession.

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Great point, our main strength is our creativity. We have the potential to make our own game play through our own bands, guilds, song lyrics etc.

I think it's also important to reach out to the new entertainers. It seems that new people come into the game everyday and want to try out our profession. Their experience can go either of two ways:

1) Everyone is AFK, all they hear is variations of "Welcome to cantina, tips are grately apreciated, plz" (my biggest pet peeve is misspelled macro speech; speech macros are bad enough, at least show some decency through proper grammer and spelling). They soon rush off and become a marksman or something.

2) There's a ATK group that invites them to join,they have a good time hanging out on group chat and a couple of non-ents come in and interact with the group. The new player then thinks "Hey, this is pretty fun" andthey areon the road to becoming an entertainer.

Overall, I think if we work hard to make the game more fun for our fellow entertainers then the worst that can happen is that we are having a great time in our own little niche.