Entertainer Archive

You make a good point. Actually I am beginning to think the answer is elsewhere....

Especially after I conducted my experiment and did a little math about entertainer xp gains.

Most types of xp scale with more skill. Crafters can make bigger things = quicker xp. Combatants can fight bigger things = more weapon experience. Scouts can harvest from bigger things = more scouting experience. Scouts can also make bigger tents = more survival xp.

In fact... The only other xp I could think of that doesn't scale with skill.... Is the other healing class... Medics.

(Though, even medics can be considered to scale if you count medics in combat having to heal damage more and more.)

So I decided to bring up the medic skill tree and look at what kind of experience was required to advance.

Medic was 1000-5000-10000-15000 for 3 branches. Entertainers are 1000-5000-10000-25000 for 1 branch. Okay, seems good, medics have more ways to get their xp but entertainers have only one healing branch.

Then I went to elite professions. Entertainers I know off the top of my head - 25000-50000-100000-125000. Two of those to be precise. So I figured doctors would be similar. Nope. 15000-30000-45000-60000. So totalling it all out, to get master doctor you need 543000 healing experience. To get master musician or dancer, you need 641000 healing experience. That's 100k more.

But actually it's many times more. See, after what I figured out about wound healing.. Medics get MUCH more per wound healed. Something like 1xp for every 2 wounds healed, something like that. I don't remember off the top of my head to be honest. But it's easy to check with medics, they get the xp numbers. We get BF at a good 2xp per 1 BF though. But not only do they get more xp per wound healed, they ALSO have 6 stats of wounds to heal, not just 3 like entertainers. And on top of that, they get xp for healing damage too. Everyone takes damage.. It's part of playing, you get damage. So a medic heals it, and gets xp. If memory serves me, medic damage healing gives xp at a better rate than entertainer wound healing. Entertainers only heal wounds, which people try to avoid getting, and BF, which people also try to avoid getting, moreso now with the new death penalty.

A non master dancer or musician gets 10-75xp for buffing the mind pool, or 10-75xp for buffing BOTH secondary mind stats combined. I just asked a doctor how much xp they get for a buff. The answer was 250ish for a weak buff (400-600 point range) up to over 600xp for a really good buff, and as low as 100-125 for the "cheap stuff" (Non advanced enhancement pack). And they have 6 stats they can buff, compared to our two, though realistically 1.

Not to mention doctors can just run around randomly buffing people for xp, or dropping a stim here or there.. And anyone that steps into the med center is free game for healing. On the other hand, entertainers have to be actively watched. One time I was on an advanced planet dancing and doing my thing. In walks a group just ripe with black rot to heal. Then one of them pulls out a slitherhorn and starts tooting away while the others listen. So I let them know if I danced with their musician, they would get healed much faster. I was told no, they wanted him to get the xp. I'm sure I'm not alone in that experience, either.

So to recap, things entertainers have going for them in the healing xp arena over medics:

• Everyone in the group gets all the xp for the wounds and BF the group heals.
  
• BF gives much better xp per point healed than any type of wounds healed by anyone.
  
• No components
  
• Can heal more than one person at once

And medics over entertainers have:

• Twice as many types of wounds to heal.
  
• More xp per wound point healed.
  
• Less xp to get master elite profession.
  
• More xp per buff
  
• 6x more stats to buff
  
• Buffing takes a lot less time (Even considering the rare possibility of buffing 20 people at once with a full group + 1 setperform)
  
• Can heal damage for xp
  
• Damage healing also gives more xp per point healed than entertainers get per wound healed
  
• Healing takes much less time
  
• Less xp to master elite professions
  
• Can heal in camps too (Yes so can entertainers, but they only get a small portion of their healing xp potential)
  
• Can heal wounds on anybody in the med center (Or elsewhere with med droid)
  
• Can heal damage on anybody anywhere
  
• Can buff anybody in the med center (Or elsewhere with med droid)
  
• Can get a droid to be able to heal anywhere
  
• Can also get combat xp for healing someone who is fighting

(I left AFK macros out of both lists intentionally... Though if I were to include it, it would be another point for medics, not entertainers. Medics can make macros to get xp much more efficiently than entertainers who just have to hope people will watch them.)
Now, I know theres balancing with entertainers gaining xp.. But writing it all out like this... The scale just seems so tipped towards medics.
It also occurred to me.. The way entertainers get xp, the ideal thing would be for everyone in the galaxy to come to one cantina where all the entertainers were grouped. We always knew that going to distant locations was a gamble, and often a losing one... But consider this... By putting a single entertainer out in a distant location.. They are getting only xp for healing people there. But not only that, if they had stayed in a big city, those people would likely have gone to them to heal anyway. And then they would still have gotten the xp, plus xp from other people, plus the rest of the group also gets the xp. So staying in the big cantinas and purposely leaving others deserted magnifies the experience entertainers are getting on average by quite a bit. While I used a lone entertainer in this example, sending a group out has the exact same effect.
Does anyone else see anything wrong with this picture?

That was in response to a response to my idea for entertainer missions, but the meat of it sums up a big part of what is wrong with the entertainer class as far as game mechanics goes. It does nothing to touch what makes the class "fun" or not. I reposted it in it's own thread (And formatted the lists properly while I was at it) because of that.

Thanks for these thoughtful posts.A couple of questions and comments.

1. Your findings bring to mind a question I've long had about healing XP: is it different for Dancers and Musicians? When I leveled up my Musician to master, I never received a chunk of more than a few hundred heal XP in one tick. By contrast, my Dancer band-mates would occasionally get enormous spikes of heal XP, a thousand or more in one tick. In fact, even when I leveled up to Master Entertainer, I remember being surprised how high dance heal XP could go. Am I mistaken about this?

2. If heal XP does not scale with skill, as you say, is that so bad? People already level up to Master Musician in less than a week. By contrast, a Carbineer or Bounty Hunter still take weeks and weeks to make master. Why should Musician be any easier to master than Bounty Hunter? As Correspondent, I have always taken the position that my profession is as important as any other -- and ease of mastering dilutes the importance and value of a profession. Indeed, the devs intendedmatering Musicianto take much longer; when I first leveled up, it took me several weeks, perhaps because I didn't AFK-macro at all.

3. I also like heal XP because it tests the one thing a performer needs to be able to do: find an audience. It's a measure of whether you or your band can attract attention. Mind you, I wouldn't mind replacing one of the two heal lines with something else, like an instrument crafting line ora singing line or some such. But in principle, I don't have a problem with music heal XP.

4. There are other professions whose XP does not scale with skill. I just made master BE, and I received the same lousy 92 XP for DNA-sampling a rill when I was at DNA 4 as I did at DNA 1. As you acknowledge, medical XP doesn't scale either, though it is admittedly far easier to get than music heal XP. Now I'm working on Combat Medic, and again I'm astonished at how trivial it is to gain medical XP.To my mind,it's a problem if the game gets too easy. Games, for me, are fun if they present more of a challenge.

I think huge 1000+ XP spikes are due to lag (multiple xp hits pile up at once and then get forced out to the client in a lump).

C

1: The bursts of heal xp for dancers I believe was a bug. That aside, yes it is the same. According to my tests, the xp is purely a function of healing and buffing. I did the tests as a dancer, but it is in line with what I see as a musician.

2: The reason people can get master in a week is because of running a macro while AFK. I tried not to touch on the issue, since my last post of facts, I added that in and so that's what people replied about. If someone really plays long enough to get master in a week ATK, then I say give them the title so they can finally get some sleep. If the ability to macro to master were taken out, this wouldn't be an issue.

3: IMO, all heal xp tests is your ability to find Coronet. (Read the last part of the first post for an explanation of why I feel that.) I found an audience when I was going to master. I legitimately made over 50k dance xp in the span of a couple hours. (Around 300xp a tick doing popular2 and close to 350xp for poplock2.) But it was irrelevent, since I hardly made any healing xp. If anything, the opposite is true - that the ability to find an audience just means healing xp lags more. People will stay longer to keep watching, giving more dance or music xp, but at that point they don't need healing.

4: I knew there had to be another one. That does sound painful. Perhaps you are right about other classes being too easy. Personally it doesn't make a lick of difference to me. I'm doing it because it's fun.

I just thought of something else. People have said entertainer healing xp has been drying up. People often vaguely say it's item decay and just leave it at that. Back in the beginning, you'd actually hit the top of the healing lines about the time you were reaching the top of another line. (I would have been almost right on if I hadn't danced at a really big event where I earned about 50,000 dance xp in 2 hours.) But now, there are a number of things that have reduced entertainer healing xp, to varying degrees.

• Item decay means people are more careful about deaths - previously deaths were often seen as a quick trip to cloning facility, even when uninsured. I think over half the people I healed had exactly 100 wounds back then. Now it's much more rare.
  
• People in general know how to play the game better.
  
• The bug that caused bursts of huge amounts of healing xp (I got 7k at once) was fixed.
  
• Creature handlers. As soon as players discovered creatures make good tanks, people take less damage, so have less wounds to heal.

I'm sure there is more I'm forgetting too. Anyway, I think I have actually found something that is close to AFK macroers in what I view as the priority list of issues.