CUEmu - Thread Posts

DarkY0da

Sun Aug 01, 2004 3:49 am

You should check out the thread here on this

Oh-Orb Rizo Twi'lek
Just hanging out... watching with interest what changes do or don't happen.

I support the NDE. (New Drygo Experience)
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Landlubber

Sun Aug 01, 2004 3:57 am

#93

JohnMarble wrote:

I see it as the exact opposite. Buffbots have caused there to be fewer atk entertainers.

How come nobody mentions how boring being a doctor is? It's the exact same "gameplay," these guys sitting outside the starport for hours on end. Nobody points at a single doctor and demands they should be on 23 hours (as they have argued with me), because there will always be another doctor to come along.

But do you think for one minute there would be as many doctors, if the med droids were removed and they were forced back into the med centers, where they would find adoc buffbot parked, spamming they were giving the buffs away for free?Don't like it, doc? Nobody's forcing you to stay in this busy med center, why don't you go to Wayfar?There would soon be just the buffbot, and people dropping doctor.

How come doctors play these characters, sitting for hours outside starports? What boring gameplay! The reason: they can make good credits. I'm a musician,and not only do I not make"good credits," I don't make squat. First it was the hologrind, and no tips, now it's the buffbots, and no tips. Nobody wants to pay for buffs anymore, the profession is destroyed.

And you wonder why you can't find an entertainer.

Message Edited by JohnMarble on 08-01-2004 05:48 AM

/agree

Nothing to add to this really...

______________________________________________________
The Ti'lya Brothers: Ailar (Entertainer/Chimaera, DG Trader/Bria),
Klofi (Smuggler/Chimaera) -- Cancelled,
"You have a right to be upset. Anyone who is attached to any profession that doesn't get a lot of new content has a right to be upset." -- HanseSOE
______________________________________________________
Raph Koster on: "SWG: What went wrong?"

Erawia_D

Sun Aug 01, 2004 8:45 am

#94

Umm.. actually, some of us HAVE posted solutions to what you call the 'source' of the problem (which I tend to agree with). Read this forum and you'll find them. Hell, just look for my own posts for my suggestion.

The problem for entertainers is that AFK buffbots CHANGE THE WAY EVERYONE ELSE PLAYS, which makes ATK entertainers not used and ignored.

Nowadays I can be in a cantina for three hours, and 90% of the people will come in, find the buffbot, and go AFK themselves. When I try to talk to someone, 3/4 of the time I get "Huh? do I know you? why are you talking to me?" This is SO much worse then it was even a month ago.

We're caught in a self-defeating loop now, and as long as the Devs continue their support for buffbots (even TH's 'solution' implies continued support for what is supposed to be against the EULA) it will keep going downhill.

SOE NEEDS TO STOP THEIR CONTINUED SUPPORT FOR BUFFBOTS. WHY DOES SOE SUPPORT CHARACTERS WHO THEY KNOW BREAK THE EULA?

Erawia_D

Sun Aug 01, 2004 9:00 am

#95

Let me provide you with a parallel, PistolDance;

If you look at the Jedi Balancing thread, you will see that jedi want:

1. to be not soloable by any other non-jedi.
2. Jedi TEF for bounty hunters to not be extended to other members in the group that the bounty hunter is in.

This mean, guess what, that Bounty Hunter is essentially nerfed as a profession, since they are completely unable to either solo OR as a group complete their mission.

Should Jedi be allowed to Nerf the Bounty Hunters for their own desires?

For entertainers, your argument essentially is saying that the needs of all the combat professions should be allowed to Nerf the entertainer profession. Because that is essentially what Buffbots are. They are a nerf for entertainers. Not only that, but they are griefing ATK entertainers, by killing the entertainer style of play.

Making ATK slightly more desireable by a menu/% increase will NOT change the fact that their continued existence is 1. a nerf for the entertainer professions, and 2. greifing.

kirah_ashlin

Sun Aug 01, 2004 9:37 am

#96

BTW, Pistol - I did read your post completely and nothing in there stated that you had any entertainment knowledge.

If what you claim as mastery was done for the hologrind than your points are invalidated. If you indeed spent a good deal of time at a master level entertainer profession then I have towonder why our concerns about buffbots are unfounded in your estimation? Do you buffbot?

Buffbots are educating the player masses now. I am constantly being asked to "group" with a player so they can get their buff. I am being stiffed more often now, also. I find I have to correct the wrong mentality that other players have regarding not just buffs, but entertainers, as well. Buffbots have done more than just hurt our economy - they are destroying our reputation. And no amount of credits,quests,clickiesradials or new dances/songscan make up for that.

JohnMarble

Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:09 am

#97

DarkY0da wrote:

You should check out the thread here on this

Dammit, I hate it when they do that! I can't reply to a thread without checking three forums first. Guess I could crosspost my response, but why bother.

Krupskaya

Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:36 am

#98

If you look at the Jedi Balancing thread, you will see that jedi want:

1. to be not soloable by any other non-jedi.
2. Jedi TEF for bounty hunters to not be extended to other members in the group that the bounty hunter is in.

This mean, guess what, that Bounty Hunter is essentially nerfed as a profession, since they are completely unable to either solo OR as a group complete their mission.

Because, naturally, Bounty Hunters with a mission on the same Jedi cannot group together, correct? Right -- no formal logic here, just bad analogies.

For entertainers, your argument essentially is saying that the needs of all the combat professions should be allowed to Nerf the entertainer profession. Because that is essentially what Buffbots are. They are a nerf for entertainers. Not only that, but they are griefing ATK entertainers, by killing the entertainer style of play.

You have no monopoly on the Entertainer lifestyle. Nor is anyone "killing" your style of play by choosing to roll a BuffBot. This is not a single-person game, where the community is a fabrication conjured up for your convenience. Players make choices as to who they will patronize, and this constant ATK Entertainer "angst" about the creeping evil of maleficent BuffBots merely evinces a disdain for the free market environment where players are free to make these choices. It is exactly this sort of self-righteous arrogance which has made the community at-large so unsympathetic to ATK Entertainer concerns.

Making ATK slightly more desireable by a menu/% increase will NOT change the fact that their continued existence is 1. a nerf for the entertainer professions, and 2. greifing.

No. That's exactly wrong. There's a difference between competition and usurpation, and you don't need an Economics degree to discern it. By your rationale, Starbucks should be immediately closed because it's relatively inexpensive, cheap provision of needed goods undercuts local retailers. Griefingsignifies aplaystyle conceived with the exclusive intent of damaging the well-being of others, and it is (expectedly) arrogant beyond belief to assume that BuffBots are created for the exclusive purpose of detracting from your experience. Yet simply because BuffBots undercut you, it is assumed they are "griefing". Undercutting is not an anti-competitive trade practice IRL -- in fact, it is the foundation of a market economy. Collusion, however, constitutes the artificial regimentation of supply in order to keep prices high and disadvantage the consumer. And that is illegal.

In essence, you're using overwrought, emotional complaints about "griefing" to replace a free-market with a command-and-control economy, classifying competition as a "nerf" while suggesting collusion as a better alternative. In any serious enterprise, such complaints would earn nothing but prolonged, hysterical laughter.

And here lies the foundation of all the anti-BuffBot hysteria rampant in the ATK Entertainer community: you do not trust SWG players to make a responsible choice as to whom they will patronize. Consequently, you militate for that choice to be removed to entitle you to the sole "ownership" of the aforementioned players. We are not a commodity, and your every harangue against our free agency will undermine your business and lead to the creation of more BuffBots.

Message Edited by Krupskaya on 08-01-2004 10:37 AM

IGN Memos

Erawia_D

Sun Aug 01, 2004 11:14 am

#99

Krupskaya, thank you for proving my point.

AnakinSWG

Sun Aug 01, 2004 11:14 am

#100

Krupskaya wrote:

And here lies the foundation of all the anti-BuffBot hysteria rampant in the ATK Entertainer community: you do not trust SWG players to make a responsible choice as to whom they will patronize. Consequently, you militate for that choice to be removed to entitle you to the sole "ownership" of the aforementioned players. We are not a commodity, and your every harangue against our free agency will undermine your business and lead to the creation of more BuffBots.

Nor are WE a commodity, Krupskaya. Why do we not trust SWG players to make a responsible choice? History has proven that they will shift their business toward the source of free buffs. Rather than pay to interact with a player, they will take their money elsewhere, interacting with another player, and, once again, ignoring the Entertainer professions.

The BuffBot plague spread because nothing was done to prevent it. Complaints from the Entertainer community did nothing. Simple ingame activism did nothing. Only developer intervention will allow the entertainer community to survive in the economic sector. I use the term "survive" with all due consideration of the fact that SOME players still choose to patronize live entertainment. However, review of recent trends will illustrate the fact that those numbers are decreasing, while the number of buffbots in public venues is increasing. Live Buffs are being removed from the cantinas by an ill-advised macro system.

~Til Kismeta~
I'm a dishonest man, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest.
It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, honestly. Because you can't tell when they're going to do something incredibly...stupid.

Krupskaya

Sun Aug 01, 2004 11:21 am

#101

Nor are WE a commodity, Krupskaya. Why do we not trust SWG players to make a responsible choice? History has proven that they will shift their business toward the source of free buffs. Rather than pay to interact with a player, they will take their money elsewhere, interacting with another player, and, once again, ignoring the Entertainer professions.

You provide a service of which consumers may partake.

Moreover, you openly admit that you do not trust the playerbase to make responsible choices on this issue. Again evincing the fact that the ATK Entertainer community has alienated consumers with incessant, melodramatic whining about what was once a fringe practice and is now predominating.

I use the term "survive" with all due consideration of the fact that SOME players still choose to patronize live entertainment. However, review of recent trends will illustrate the fact that those numbers are decreasing, while the number of buffbots in public venues is increasing.

You unabashedly admit that you have no confidence in the ability of SWG players to make intelligent, rational choices, and then seem outraged when they no longer patronize you? Please. I have tipped up to 80k for an Entertainer Buff and over 10k for regular Battle Fatigue Healing, and, honestly, every whimper and whine on these forums makes me and hundreds of others less inclined to patronize live Entertainers. At least BuffBots don't bite the hand that feeds them.

IGN Memos

Krupskaya

Sun Aug 01, 2004 11:22 am

#102

Erawia_D wrote:
Krupskaya, thank you for proving my point.

You had no point, and if "thanks" is your only rebuttal, then you have all of my pity and none of my respect.

IGN Memos

Padtai

Sun Aug 01, 2004 11:29 am

#103

"So I concede to everyone in the post and apologize for trying to find a solution that is plausible and can meet the needs of more than one profession."

Why are you apologizing for trying to meet the needs of more than one profession, unless you mean that in asarcastic "Excuse me for thinking of someone else" kind of way? I'm also thinking of the needs of more than one profession, in fact, more than one style of play within different professions since I AM an outsider. I still do not think buffbots are a good thing. I also do not think they are griefing but I do think the use ought to be an exploit. I agree that griefing is done to intentionally hurt others, but exploits are things that make the game unbalanced. Now I'm not focussing on an argument that buffbots are treated as exploits, but that they should be. I've explained why elsewhere so I'll skip it for now.

I am also hesitant to support some push to give live entertainers new and stronger bonuses just to make them better than AFKing entertainers because I am concerned those may prove harmful to other professions. What will allowing entertainers to have 200% buffs that last 3 hours do to the demand and use of food, and what small need there is to group for combat now? As it is, I feel toostrong with doc buffs and rarely get mind buffs. If SOE officially sanctions afk buffbots and removes the negative impact on entertainers by giving them better buffs or some other bonus reason to see them (such as for crafting), then I suppose I could start using the vending bot without a sense of guilt. My combat gameplay would become even less challenging and I would have even less incentive to group than I do now.

Doctors have bots too, despite how fun the profession is to play. I see this as a problem that buffs are too good, that they are seen as too necessary and there is far too much demand for them. The same way there used to be too much demand for pets. We need to reduce the demand, not increse the supply by letting people play AFK. We definitely do not need to make the problem even worse bythen increasing the value of buffs to reward those not being AFK. Imagine if doctors started demanding (and you know we would) the ability to be rewarded for being ATK duirng buff delivery with 4k buffs that last 4 hours, or something else. Yes I know we doctors have lots of other instances our skills are needed, but right now most of the focus of our profession is on buffing, and the buffing only types are a loud voice. Bots are really not just symptoms of broken professions, they are also a sign of human nature to find a way to advance with the least amount of effort.

Competiton and free market are principles I frequently champion when the docs try to price fix, but I'm afraid I cannot use preserving player choice when it comes to afkbuffbots. That would be akin to saying dumping, slavery or child labor ought to be allowed simply because that would be the choice many people would make in order to gain a competitve advantage. Even in real world economics we recognize that there are some limits tohow "free" the market should be since we recognize that there arecertainproblems that can arise that are bad for society if allowed to progress unchecked.Besides, this is a GAME so some liberties with a free marketshould be taken to make sure everyone is having fun. That's why the developers have to add in or remove "money sinks", because this is not a real economy. Each mission someone runs can flood an infinite amount of credits into the system. And having to compete with a bot or become one yourself is not I think a game that sounds fun to play.

Sometimes you need someone who is outside your problem to help you see it more clearly. Its goodMilandra tried to think of other professions, but we are all of us limited in our perspective by our experiences. The more voices who can speak out on an issue, the clearer picture the developers will have of what they should do and I hope the clearer picture different posters will have to. So I post. You should too. As long as we aren't just flaming but explaining why we think what we do, I think its useful. Each time someone asks why buffbots are bad to run or patronize, if I've got the time, I know I"m going to feel like telling them, until I get really bored of explaining it or I get my community veteran status

.

Drygo

Sun Aug 01, 2004 11:33 am

#104

Krupskaya wrote:

Nor are WE a commodity, Krupskaya. Why do we not trust SWG players to make a responsible choice? History has proven that they will shift their business toward the source of free buffs. Rather than pay to interact with a player, they will take their money elsewhere, interacting with another player, and, once again, ignoring the Entertainer professions.

You provide a service of which consumers may partake.

Moreover, you openly admit that you do not trust the playerbase to make responsible choices on this issue. Again evincing the fact that the ATK Entertainer community has alienated consumers with incessant, melodramatic whining about what was once a fringe practice and is now predominating.

I use the term "survive" with all due consideration of the fact that SOME players still choose to patronize live entertainment. However, review of recent trends will illustrate the fact that those numbers are decreasing, while the number of buffbots in public venues is increasing.

You unabashedly admit that you have no confidence in the ability of SWG players to make intelligent, rational choices, and then seem outraged when they no longer patronize you? Please. I have tipped up to 80k for an Entertainer Buff and over 10k for regular Battle Fatigue Healing, and, honestly, every whimper and whine on these forums makes me and hundreds of others less inclined to patronize live Entertainers. At least BuffBots don't bite the hand that feeds them.

In every game, the developers have often said that only about 1-2% of the playerbase actually reads and actively posts to these boards. That's a very small percentage of people who actually have any clue whatsoever that entertainers don't trust them to make reasonable choices. I can tell you, however, for the other 98% of the people who have no idea about this fact, they still aren't patronizing us. They have no idea about our supposed "arrogance." Yet for some reason they continue to make beelines for the free 23/7 dual dancer/musican buffbots, completely ignoring the live players. It seems fairly obvious to me why they do so, and it has nothing at all to do with our distrust. Our distrust happened *after* we noticed they all made irresponsible choices. And, conditioning that this is how it's "supposed" to be makes this happen in ever increasing frequency.

And, really, I shouldn't say all, because some players are wonderful and responsible and supportive, but they're in a minority.

- I support hawtpants

Entertainer Archive

Thread: BuffBots, are they really the problem?