Entertainer Archive

Message Edited by cknoos on 11-05-2004 11:32 AM

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SOETyrant wrote:

1) We do take the unattended macroing issues seriously, and this ability will go away, but we are not going to address it this month. It is a big technicalchange, and takes a serious amount of development and testing. It is being done by a different team than the Combat Upgrade folks so it is not gated by that effort.

2) Yes, the other professions (including all Ents) are scheduled to be revamped right after the Combat Upgrade and before the GCW. This is our stated development strategy. When we start that process we will engage with the community on the design in the In-Development section of the website to ensure what gets done enhances the gameplay and fun within the Ent professions.

3) There is another team doing fixes on all theprofessions not covered in theCombat Upgradein the meantime to address immediate issues, bugsand low (dev) cost enhancements. We will being doing some interim fixes to the Combat Upgrade professions too, as warranted. With over 30 professions they have a lot of ground to cover but Ents willl be getting their share.

4) SWG as a wholeis an entertainment experience which integrates lots of gaming and social elements. It is intended to have an entire series of compelling and fun activities. Not all of these activities are working the way you or we would like them to. I don't think it is healthy or appropriate for people to continually do things that make them frustrated or angry. This seems like common sense to me, but common sense appears less common all the time as I get older. When I'm not having fun at something, but I still love it at some level, I take a break. This seems better than driving myself to an emotional breaking point. I would hope the same for our customers, as I don't like it when people leave us angry. I would rather people took a break, than got to their breaking point with us, because when they get to that point, there is no chance they will ever come back (it is a divorce, not a breakup).

All the devs, myself included, work every day to try and improve the fun within SWG. We all get sad when we see people leave the game because we couldn't fix it fast enough to save them from leaving. We don't want anyone to leave the game, we want them to enjoy the SWG that so much of our effort and emotion is invested in.

I think that unattended macroing doesn't belong in our game and it will be removed. I have committed usto this, and I remain committed to it. When morepeople play AFK than ATK, we haven't done our job very well, and we need to fix that.

Thanks for listening. We haven't forgotten your issues and we will work to ensure the Ent professions provide the social gaming experience you deserve.

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Wonderful to see aDev acknowledge our existence in this game. I have to be honest, I wonder what a post like this only a few months earlier would have done to save you guys several Entertainer subscriptions. Quite a shame. For your company.

But, thank you for posting and letting us know what the hell is going on. Looks like our professions are headed on a collision course with obsolescence, which is just plain sad. Can't wait until you guys strip us of all of our purpose in-game, what a grand experience that will be. So, yeah - let's talk about priorities. Let's talk about professions in your game that will very soon cease to have a purpose to play or pay for, except for someone just liking to be a Dancer or Musician. Sure, the dedicated few are nice, but if a profession (or professions) cease to have a purpose and benefit to the game, you will successfully deathblow Entertainers thoroughly and effectively. Will you rez them? More importantly, will anyone CARE by then? *shudder*

Now, the only question I want an answer to (since you've stated our situation so effectively) is:

Did the Dev team INTEND to allow players to create 100% AFK Entertainer buffbots?

That's all I want to know. If it was not intended, why the HELL isn't there a CSR policy to control the EXPLOIT of utilizing game mechanics (/join, etc etc etc etc) to benefit a character unfairly in a way that was never intended by the Devs? Why?

Also, please tell SOE to enjoy that extra subscription money for alt accounts - the onesthat make my gaming experience so wonderfully horrid and make your game look like it's inhabited by people who don't play your game, they mock it and it's mechanics.

Good day and thanks for posting. Wish someone would havedone it sooner. We've only been asking for months. Was it really so painful?

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cknoos wrote:
Huh, guess I can close two of my accounts then. Of course, this will bring about a flurry of active and readily available entertainers everywhere, as well as make those tedious crafting professions a -lot- easier.

Let me take a stab at some numbers here, lets say that each server has 15,000 active players, I would imagine that perhaps 150 of those are characters who play fulltime entertainers. Rightly so, we need to make life a lot more difficult for the remaining 14,850 people.

//End Sarcasm

Message Edited by cknoos on 11-05-2004 11:32 AM

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SOETyrant wrote:

BTW, one of the two characters I'm spending all my play time on is an Ent (dancer/muscian). I get that the experience needs help, and the challenges of the cantinas. That experience does not match the first two months of the game and I'd love to get back to something closer to that original experience (or better).

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Tyrant:

I'd suggest the following for consideration to bring back the fresh feel of the entertainer experience:

• New cantinas for Theed, Moenia, Bestine, etc. etc. that are closer to the feel of player cantinas (a stage area, bar to the side, etc.) Many different cantins styles would enhance the overall feel of the game as opposed to the same cantina everywhere (ie. boring!).
  
  


• Address the AFK buff bots that have destroyed interaction with real players. If you remember, when the game was new, we didn't suffer without AFK buff bots, we went somewhere else and/or had friends that were entertainers.
  
  


• Introduce new group music (that sounds like actual music) and introduce new dance moves (maybe dance quests to unlock new and rare dances).
  
  


• Lower the mind/focus/willpower buff time to be very competitive to the time of a doctor's buff. If players want to chat,, they'll chat... don't give us unnecessary downtime. Allow a mind buff to only take 2 minutes and a focus/willpower buff should only take 2 minutes.
  
  

Message Edited by nolan007 on 11-07-2004 04:30 PM

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SOETyrant wrote:

BTW, one of the two characters I'm spending all my play time on is an Ent (dancer/muscian). I get that the experience needs help, and the challenges of the cantinas. That experience does not match the first two months of the game and I'd love to get back to something closer to that original experience (or better).

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Modo77 wrote:
I agree that AFk bots shouldn't be used as it goes against the whole MMORPG thing, But and its a big BUT as someone who plays at odd hours its sometimes hard to find ATK entertainers (even more so now everyone but me is in space). So removing this from the game is going to affect a lot of other players too. If you play an Entertainer character (Musician) you can heal your own wounds. Just pick up Novice Entertainer and toot your new Slitherhorn for awhile. It'll go down much faster. Only takes 15 skill points.

We either need a NPC version (which I'm sure entertainers won't be too happy about), or well emm, can't think of much else. How about healing in a cantina and sitting around. What do you do when you have health wounds and action wounds and there's no Doctor around - beg for a Doctor bot? No, you sit down in a medical center and wait, or you find yourself a Doctor.

So I guess unless there is another idea about, you have two options leave the bots alone, or give us something else to get buffed by.

I'd like the 3rd option of having Entertainers treated like human players just like everyone else in the game. Why is that not an option? You can't find a Doctor to buff you when you play - do you moan about Doctor bots and needing Doctor NPC's to buff you? No, you find a Doc. No need to do that with Entertainers - just visit the nearest fraud in a cantina that's macroing, and continue to proclaim how non-existent Entertainers are.

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cknoos wrote:
Huh, guess I can close two of my accounts then. Of course, this will bring about a flurry of active and readily available entertainers everywhere, as well as make those tedious crafting professions a -lot- easier.

Let me take a stab at some numbers here, lets say that each server has 15,000 active players, I would imagine that perhaps 150 of those are characters who play fulltime entertainers. Rightly so, we need to make life a lot more difficult for the remaining 14,850 people.

//End Sarcasm

Message Edited by cknoos on 11-05-2004 11:32 AM

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Or, gee - let's make the Entertainer experience better so more people will do it fulltime. Get it? What an idea! Maybe there's a reason there's not so many fulltime Entertainers - maybe it's the annoying spam AFK BOTS making people run like hell from Entertainer after they just learned it!

Spare me the agony of everyone's in-game life without a mechanic you should never have had in the first place. People whined when the free vehicle repairs went in, it's the same deal. Just because players found a way to make player characterEntertainers into NPC's doesn't mean that's how it should be, and though you don't see it at all, it's destroyed the purpose of playing an Entertainer. Bring a purpose back to it, make it viable again, and there will be more Entertainers.

Seems like only yesterday when people would send /tells to Entertainers looking for buffs....back when we were treated like humans and players, not people you just have to get around so that the PC NPC can heal/buff you.

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Warryyr wrote:

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Modo77 wrote:
I agree that AFk bots shouldn't be used as it goes against the whole MMORPG thing, But and its a big BUT as someone who plays at odd hours its sometimes hard to find ATK entertainers (even more so now everyone but me is in space). So removing this from the game is going to affect a lot of other players too. If you play an Entertainer character (Musician) you can heal your own wounds. Just pick up Novice Entertainer and toot your new Slitherhorn for awhile. It'll go down much faster. Only takes 15 skill points.

We either need a NPC version (which I'm sure entertainers won't be too happy about), or well emm, can't think of much else. How about healing in a cantina and sitting around. What do you do when you have health wounds and action wounds and there's no Doctor around - beg for a Doctor bot? No, you sit down in a medical center and wait, or you find yourself a Doctor.

So I guess unless there is another idea about, you have two options leave the bots alone, or give us something else to get buffed by.

I'd like the 3rd option of having Entertainers treated like human players just like everyone else in the game. Why is that not an option? You can't find a Doctor to buff you when you play - do you moan about Doctor bots and needing Doctor NPC's to buff you? No, you find a Doc. No need to do that with Entertainers - just visit the nearest fraud in a cantina that's macroing, and continue to proclaim how non-existent Entertainers are.

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