Entertainer Archive

Reading the thread with the new entertainer asking about missions, I had an insight....

What if missions were to spawn NPCs which we actually had to heal? Say you'd go talk to them, then they would suddenly have mind wounds and you have to dance or play music for them... Higher level dancers/musicians could start healing crowds of NPCs, or more hurt NPCs.. Then when you were done, they would pay you for the healing. You could take groups and heal them faster to do more missions.

This would solve:

• Entertainer money problems


• Complaints of less healing xp with the new death penalties


• AFK macroing being the easiest way to get experience


• The fact that entertainer missions right now are pretty much pointless, as delivery missions pay more for the same amount of travel and no extra work once you get there.


• Probably more I can't think of...

This could also work for medic mission terminals and doctor mission terminals, though they would most likely not find as much use, as medics can just come into the cantina and use stims for good xp.

Kind of like booking gigs, I like it. Would be greatif you were sent toboth player cities or thedefaultcities, it would give players areason to see these new cities.

---

Gillgalid wrote:
Kind of like booking gigs, I like it. Would be greatif you were sent toboth player cities or thedefaultcities, it would give players areason to see these new cities.

---

Interestingly, I was visiting a friend with a brand new cantina. She had put an entertainer mission terminal out front. I turned it on out of curiosity and each refresh brought up at least one mission whose destination was the local player cantina. I didn't try to figure out if any of the missions were going to other player cantinas, but Talus has only two designer-created cities. The number of different different choices for distance did suggest that many of those missions were being aimed at other player cantinas in the world rather than Dearic or Nashal.

Well I've already had someone come to my cantina because they got a mission from from Keren. I also did so myself out of curiosity. It was interesting reading about the event that was cancelled due to safety reasons related to the pyrotechnics planned to be used at my cantina.

Oh and since you're here Slick.. Any thoughts on the idea proposed?

Hm. Although this is a good idea on the face of it, I see one potential major issue. One of the big complaints at-keyboard performers make about AFKers is that they are like "NPC healing bots," and that "if you allow that you may as well just have NPC entertainers in every major cantina so the wounded folks do not need to interact with other players." Can't this argument be turned on its head with what you propose? "If you have NPCs who are wounded, why would any entertainer ever need to perform for another player?" We keep arguing that Entertainment is a social profession. Wouldn't this be taking the "social" out of it?

After all, why don't we want NPCs to heal BF for other players? Because then they won't need us at all. Can't they say the same thing about NPCs being wounded? Then we wouldn't need them at all -- the NPCs are both paying us, and giving us healing XPs. This would be a distinct disincentive to service other players -- especially if the NPCs rewarded better than a regular player could afford while being reasonable about healing. Imagine a player that pays say 5 cr per BF healed. That's actually a decent rate. Most of the time they won't have more than 50 or so BF though, so that's only 250 cr. That's not much better than current mission rewards, so wouldn't NPCs be programmed to pay more than that and have more BF? (If not I can only imagine the firestorm of "missions are worthless" posts that would ensue.) So if I have a choice of going to some remote cantina and earning 2,000 cr and gaining 500 xp from an NPC mission, or staying put and earning 250 cr and 100 xp from a human player, which am I going to pick?

It seems to me we would have a hard time arguing against NPC healers, if there are NPC victims around for us to heal. So while I like the idea of things that positively reinforce at-keyboard play, I'm not sure this would work in a fair way to the other professions. In brief, if we get this, I can't justify arguing against other professions getting NPC versions of US to heal them at will. Otherwise, we get what we want at will, and they still are dependent on us, and that doesn't sound very fair. As it is right now, they depend on us AND we depend on them, so it's fair. This suggestion would severely alter that dynamic, wouldn't it? Or perhaps I am missing something.

C

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?
  
  
  
  Inside my heart is breaking, my make-up may be flaking
  But my smile still stays on
  My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies
  Fairytales of yesterday will grow but never die
  I can fly - my friendsSWG Entertainer.com Fashions by TK
  

Ack what a formatting mess.. I got my UL and LI tags backward there... I'll repost it properly as it's own topic though, as I think it needs it.

---

Tiaga wrote:
Oh and since you're here Slick.. Any thoughts on the idea proposed?

---

I'm a proponent of the idea of having some sort of NPC interaction. I wouldn't neccesarily allow healing XP from NPC's as part of missions. The point of a mission is to make money. Advancing in your profession while you do it is secondary. I've always liked the idea of having a mission be to a camp someplace in the wild instead of a cantina. The entertainer's job would be to play in a way that made the npc's "interested", with the base pay coming from the mission and additional pay coming from "tips" based on how well the entertainer got the npc's up on their feet and clapping.

Basically, it would become a sort of mini-game instead of a straight "go here, play for ten minutes,get paid" thing.