Entertainer Archive
Thread: L.A.M.Er (Longterm, AFK, Macro, Entertainer)
Folks, I'm not a moderator. However, when the conversation gets this heated then I don't feel wrong in suggesting that maybe it's time to let the sleeping dog lie for awhile. There's no completely right or wrong answer for this topic and in all the time I've followed it on all three forums, I've never seen one side convince the other.
Trust me, the designers are aware of the controversy and I've reminded them about it just in case it slipped their minds. 
If you do have something to say about it then please - Keep your posts about the the topic and not about your fellow players. We're all just here to have fun in our own way, and one person's idea of fun is rarely just like another's. For some it's the journey. For some it's the destination. For some it's having the best toys and the biggest bragging rights. For some it's just getting into the skin of someone else for awhile. There will always be macrobots, even if macros are totally removed from the game. The dedicated macro players will just switch to third-party programs to achieve their ends.
The solution to the problem is to either make it more rewarding to be at the keyboard or to create some way to interrupt macros so that there's no mileage in using them. If you've got any ideas along those lines then lets talk about those instead of making judgements about how others choose to play the game.
What is the difference if you sit there and press buttons to flourish or if a macro does it for you? In fact, it actually takes longer to level with a macro than without.
I really feel sorry for someone who is annoyed with an entertainerbecausethey aredancing/playing bythemselveson one side of the room andthey are afk. It's none of your business as it's their$15 a month thatthey're spending.
Spamming advertisements to tip and heal aside, I think it's pathetic that you people actually take notice of afk entertainers. Like it really matters.
Boy, I must be grumpy this morning. While I stand by most of my flame from 10 minutes ago,I do feel that afk ents should make a habit of going to less crowded cantinas where performers are needed the most.
noom wrote:
I really feel sorry for someone who is annoyed with an entertainerbecausethey aredancing/playing bythemselveson one side of the room andthey are afk.
If all the macrobots operated that way, then you'd see far less complaining about it. The biggest complaints are really centered around the macrobots that set themselves front-and-center and not only leach XP from any group they associate with but they also engage in tip-spamming and ad-barking.
Last night an entertainer showed up,refused to join the group and started tip-spamming every minute or so. We all assumed she was AFK but it turned out that she was actually there. She just behaved in every respect like a macrobot. It was kind of weird, really,and she got defensive when we tried to explain why she ought to join the group and interact with the customers a bit. In the end it turned semi-confrontational and we let it ride. I've met people in the cantina before who resent peer pressure and it seems she was one of them. Though, when she complained that even with tip-spamming she wasn't getting tipped, I was very tempted to point out that the tip-spamming must not be a winning strategy in that case.
SlickRiptide wrote:If all the macrobots operated that way, then you'd see far less complaining about it. The biggest complaints are really centered around the macrobots that set themselves front-and-center and not only leach XP from any group they associate with but they also engage in tip-spamming and ad-barking.
Yup. That's in fact what most of us get annoyed at. Someone quietly AFKing by himself or herself in a corner for a few hours is not an issue (I will never understand the point of it, but I don't mind them doing it). It's the people who are obnoxious about it that are an issue.
C
I understand and agree with you two. I think my flame was a little premature (sometimes these boards can have that effect).
In opening a new cantina I am attempting to resolve some of this angst. There will be bumps along the way and the model may evolve, but the concept is to provide a venue for serious roleplayers that provides a mechanism for keeping out newbies and banning abusers:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=entertainer&message.id=4669
LOL What a cop out.So what are you saying? Youthink the rest of us who stayed at our keyboards while we mastered music and dance wereunwashed,goinghungry, and neglecting our families? That has got to be one of the most ridiculous paragraphs I've ever read in support of afk macroing.
And it wasn't enough that you mastered the easy way? Now you're telling us thatwe can still look forward to you being azombie entertainer because you can't make up your mind if you should go do laundry, feed your family, or play an online game? That's great...just great.
I'm thinking that someone forgot their midol this morning!!! No, sweetie, what I was saying is that if I didn't get my other things done WHILE I was playing, from time to time, then I wouldn't be able to play. I think that you missed my point. I work full time during the day, run a household, am on 2 committee's with church, 2 committee's with Cub Scouts, on the board of my local YMCA, have a husband, 2 son's, and a new puppy.....
I'm really sorry that you don't approve of my gameplay style, but I'm sure that you'll get over it. And if you had actually read a little further back in this thread instead of just jumping on one little thing that I said, you would have seen that I'm RARELY afk for more than about 10 minutes. And I certainly CAN make up my mind about what I want to do. What I want to do is get on the game and play, and do my housework and/or other things while I do it!
Have to tell ya that the tone of your post was really crappy, and I didn't appreciate it one bit. So far, this discussion has been a pretty friendly debate between 2 sides of an issue, and you just ended it for me. I no longer wish to continue, as I didn't realize that having an opinion was grounds to be PERSONALLY ATTACKED.
My biggest hope for you, is that one day your wish comes true and all the afk's of the world cease to exist and you're left sitting in a cantina for hours waiting on someone to heal your mind wounds.......
Thank you Cheesack, and others for the lively debate
TiakaCW wrote:During non-peak playing times, the skill gains not only come slow, but you stand in the cantina staring at yourself, listening to the bar babble and the system music for hours on end. THIS is boring, not the job itself. In order for me to be online and gaining skill toward my mastry then I have to do what I'm doing, boring or not.
I agree sitting in a cantina for a long time by yourself is boring. So I don't do it. You have enough skill points to master 3 full professions and dabble in a fourth. If prof #1 isn't getting you fun, you can switch to #2 or #3. Now, if no other profession in the game other than entertainer holds your interest then I guess you can't do that.. but I would actually find it rather surprising if this is true for more than a tiny handful of people.
TiakaCW wrote:
I can't gather a party of people together and ride the coat-tails of the stronger ones to help me get GREAT exp...I have to stand in a cantina, day after day, going insane......
Well, since I actually enjoy all parts of the game (that I have tried so far, which is not yet all of them but getting closer) I would never do this either. I'm not in it for the XP gain -- that's incidental. I actually like the combat system, so it's fun for me in and of itself. Even if I got 0 XP for killing things I would still do it for fun on occasion. And after Dejah (my current PC) hits Master Marksman and doesn't need any XP any more, I will still take her out to hunt things because it's fun.
I guess to some people, gaining xp = fun, and levelling = fun, and THAT is what I do not understand. I mean, I get it in principle (that people feel that way), but I will never "grok" just how gaining xp and levelling is fun, in and of itself. I'm not saying it shouldn't be fun for others... but I will never figure out what would make levelling fun.
TiakaCW wrote:
I've mentioned before that I'm a one track mind sort of person and I set my sightson mastering. I love this char, and I love to dance in the cantina and hang out and make new friends, but now my being there doesn't hinge on the fact that I HAVE to be there to further myself, it means that I'm there to have fun because I WANT to be there, and I think that is the point at which you and I part company on this subject.
Where we part company is that I WANT to be there right now, with only 1/2 my dancer boxes filled in. I am there when I want to be; I am not when I don't want to be (which is rare but does happen once or twice a week, at which point I go hunting or do some crafting or something). I can have fun without my character being master, and I can have fun without her gaining one jot of XP. For example, she's a dancer not a musician, but she does have a couple of ent music boxes. One night when only dancers were in the cantina, and no musicians to play for us, I had my dancer whip out her fizz and start playing SW2 and Rock. I gained no XP in dancing at all for at least an hour. I didn't care. I was having fun, and that's the point... I did not need to see the XP meter going up on my screen in order to have fun, and seeing it go up does not alter my level of enjoyment one bit.
For you, it seems that the joy comes from the destination. For me, it comes from the journey.
Now before you say, "Then let me play how I like and you play how you like," I am all for that. The problem is that many of the desination-minded players are ruining the journey for those of us who like the journey, by turning the cantina into a room full of mindless zombies that it is unpleasant to undertake the journey in. I'm not out to ruin your enjoyment of the destination, but I'd appreciate it if my enjoyment of the journey isn't ruined either. And I think what this thread is showing more than anything else, is that the journey has been ruined for some of us at least.
I'll tell you what would fix this whole thing and probably be easy for SOE to implement. Have the ignore list work for GRAPHICS as well as text. If I could put the AFK Macro zombies on /ignore and not only have their tip-spammage disappear but their whole obnoxious, in-the-way avatar be gone as well, then I wouldn't mind them at all. Because I'd spin the camera and see just the active people, and it wouldn't look like a zombie-yard.
The AFK zombies ruin the atmosphere, and for those who enjoy the journey the atmosphere is key, and its ruination leads to a lack of enjoyment of the journey. And therein lies the problem (for us).
C
Oh, I see, Tiaka. You can tell players who say afk entertainers are hurting the entertainer profession that they're being ridiculous. You can post that people are only complaining about afk entertainers because they're the sort of people who just aren't happy unless they have something to complain about. And you can go ahead and suggest that if the complainers don't likewhat they see, with afkers in the game,they should just go away. And no one should take any offense at any of that because you didn't single anyone one person out or use anyone's name.So no oneshould come back andtell you specifically how ridiculous you sound for posting about how you just HAVE to play your entertainer afk, at least part of the time, so that your puppy will be happy and your family with be fed and clean. Cuz THAT would be perceived asa personal attack from someone who must be pmsing,rather than a logical debate on the rights and wrongs of afk macroing. mmkay...noted.
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It is my belief that some players will use any excuse at all to justify theunattended macroing of a character inside a mmog. Some will say that they not onlylead busy workaday lives but they also have family and social obligationswhich theymust attend to while they're playing an online game at the same time.Sometimes it'sthe needs of a player's petthat's offered as an excuse for justifying unattended macroing.
But you know? I just don't buy those sorts of excuses.And the reasons I don'tare as follows: I've been online gaming for a very long time now.And what I've noticed is that there are always two camps onthe subject of unattended macroing. Those who are for it because they participate in it anddon't wish to see that there is any harm or unfairness to be foundin it. And those who are against it because they don't participate in it and theysee it as potentially harmful to the health of the game as well as unfair to fellow players. And wecan allrest assured that within the group of folks who do not macro unattendedyou'll find players who work full time, go to church,have families, get hungry,do laundry,andeven some who have puppies. So, in my mind that sorta makes the, "I have to macro unattended because I workfulltime,go to church, have a family, get hungry, do laundry, andown a puppy", sorts of players...uh...kinda outtheir butts.
Ok? Doin' my best to sound less grumpy and spare feelingshere.