Entertainer Archive
Thread: How to easily fix the AFK'd Entertainer problem
Being a newbie, I've made a few observations that a few other people haven't noticed (and likely won't agree with).
First of all, AFK dancing/music is bad. It rewards behavior that is self-destructive to theclass. Its _highly_ unrealistic and extremely unfair to new players.
However, you can't do away with Entertainer Macros. You gain too little experience to not use them, and part of performances are routines that you plan out in that mental downtime. If anything, macros need to be expanded: I'd like to incorporate a little bit of randomness and multi-level non-recursive macros, so I can work out an opus with multiple movements using different instruments that can be played by a large group.
Here's a solution:
Beyond a certain level, you ONLY gain experience in an Entertainer profession if you have an audience that requests a performance. Furthermore, double the Action cost, healing benefit,and the experience gain of all Entertainer actions. Provide a one-time (or once-a-month) benefit any time another character cheers while you are performing. Make dancing hard to maintain, but performing before a big crowd pack a big benefit.
Just dancing by yourself gives you no benefit, other then perfecting your macro routine.
In the current model, performers continue to perform. An audience has to actively listen or watch the performance to benefit. That is, beyond the initial activation of the routine, the entertainer has nothing to do.
Change the model. Make listening or watching a passive activity, and make starting the dance for an audience an active action. Or, as above, make the performer only learn while under pressure from an audience to perform well.
In this way, you can easily emulate 'fame' by making the level of fame match your level in healing. Skill is no longer a measure of age, but a measure of how much time has actually been spent entertaining.
Apalua wrote:
Provide a one-time (or once-a-month) benefit any time another character cheers while you are performing. Make dancing hard to maintain, but performing before a big crowd pack a big benefit.
This is already the case. You get bonus experience based on the size of your group's audience and on whether they give you positive reinforcement by clapping or cheering.
Just dancing by yourself gives you no benefit, other then perfecting your macro routine.
There are some problems with this approach that would make it a bad idea, in my opinion. Firstly, the devs have gone to some pains to make sure that no profession is "gated" by another profession. By "gated" I mean that you are completely dependent on other players for your advancement (or some obstacle is placed in the way). This is one reason that miner was dropped from the game and everyone was given the ability to run harvesters. The devs wanted to avoid a situation where a large number of players could end up blocked because they needed resources that were being supplied (or not) by a small number of other players.
Secondly, the effect of such a rule would be that everyone would congregate in the cities that have the most players in them. It's already tough to find entertainers in a place like Mos Taike or Bela Vistal. If you had to depend on having an audience to advance then no entertainers would ever visit those places.
In this way, you can easily emulate 'fame' by making the level of fame match your level in healing. Skill is no longer a measure of age, but a measure of how much time has actually been spent entertaining.
I'd have to say that entertainer healing already corresponds to this 'fame' measurement.It obviously hasn't solved the problem at all.
It's a tough problem to solve without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
What about a /reportafk command?
Let anyone who finds an AFK character (entertainer or surveyor) hit him with that.
This would bring up a pop-up window on the target player's screen that would require a click to respond. Let it cause a five minute countdown that would end with a /sit; /logout command being issued. If the player is not at his keyboard, then his character can be automatically logged off. If he's there, a simple click interrupts the dountdown and he may continue playing as normal. To prevent spamming, it should only be allowed to be used once per play session, and only once against a reported character for a duration of anhour.
The pop-up window should appear in random locations to beat any 3rd-party macro programs the user may be running to counter this.
It would be so nice to be able to bump and AFKer off who is stealing healing XP and tips form live players.
And the "I do it so there's someone to heal at odd hours" excuse will no longer hold water. If a live entertainer comes on the scene, the services of the AFK macrotainer will no longer be necessary. She can be relieved by a live performer
There should also be a little prompt that pops up everytime a tip is received:
Ackotisock has offered you a X credit tip.
[Accept] [Decline]
This would require a live person on the other end to actively accept the tip. An automatic /tell would be sent to the tipper, thanking him/her. So now, not only will an entertainer need a live player to accept tips, but everyone who gives a tip will be acknowledged by the recippiant.
The prompt should automatically go away after five minutes with an automatic decline.
Opinions?
In Christ,
G. B. Jackson
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=659229
Marzuk147 wrote:
Ok, recently in the dancer forum section, Jessica stated that AFK macroing for indeterminate lengths of time is acceptable. This thread has now been closed due to flaming.
Does a board moderator have the power to speak legally for sony?
If someone higher up was asked, Id at least like to see the information from someone who does have this power, instead of 3rd hand info about I asked my boss who asked by boss who said it was ok. If someone was asked, simply have them write up a statement and post it, so we can get it directly from the horses mouth so to speak.
Does anyone know of any official posts by higher ups in SOE stating simply "AFK macroing is not against the EULA"
Every time I see holo et al mention it, they mention things like why they dont change the in game tool to prevent, because it wouldnt help and people would just find 3rd party apps to do the same thing.
Why the explanation if its simply ok, as an accepted practice? It should need no other explaination than "working as intended".
I just want something such that I can refer back to it as bieng official, if I would decide to do this, in case any action would be taken against me, instead of pointing to some board moderators post and then hearing sorry, that person doesnt speak for SOE in such matters ect.
Reply:
Jeassa wrote:
Actually, I talked with Q-3PO before I posted it, just making sure I was right to begin with. Which I was and so it was perfectly fine that I post the clarification. The only reason it was being clarified was misinformation that was given to a player by a CSR. The CSR misunderstood and before it became an issue beyond just the general dislike of AFK dancers/entertainers I decided that it should be cleared up.
The EULA refers to programs such as MacroQuest (for those of you who come from an EQ background you may know what I'm talking about. Or any other 3rd Party Program which allows unattended benefits in game would be a violation, however the macro system is built into the game and therefore it is not a violation of the EULA to be AFK and using a macro.
You may wish to refer to Dev Tracker for other posts on this subject, Q3PO recently made one.
So, there you have it, like it or not sweety pies.
Jeassa is just explaining how it's not against the TOS. But it's still a problem, and the devs are aware.
Since we're pasting quotes, here's one:
The designers are working on ways to make AFK entertaining less desirable. I'm not sure where they are in the process.
In the meantime, I agree with most of the posters here. Don't tip AFK entertainers. If you have a choice, watch/listen to a non-AFK entertainer instead of an AFK one. Whenever possible try to role play with Entertainers. It keeps you both engaged and is a good way to learn about local news/legends.
The true purpose of a cantina is a meeting place where you will more than likely run into other players and learn from them or start groups with them.
Kevin "Q-3PO" O'Hara
SWG Community Relations Manager
I really hope they do something about it soon and so do most people I entertain with and a huge portion of the people I entertain for.
You know, I haven't really kept track of this argument, and as you can see at my signature, entertainer isn't my main profession, so excuse me if this has been discussed before or if I'm missing some obvious problem.
But I was wondering why they couldn't solve the problem in a way similar to the semi-solution they found to stop afk sampling for artisans. When sampling, you get a pop up window every once in a while telling you that you've detected a particularly rich combination of the resource and you're asked whether you'd like to attempt to sample it. Now, I've heard that there are ways around this window, but I also know that certain pop up windows cannot be macroed at this point (as is the case with the "accept" box image designer customers get, for instance), so let's assume they could create a pop up window which cannot be executed via a typed out command.
Why not make a pop up window for entertainers, which gives a *gain* to those who are not afk. Something like a special flourish that is not accessible via the /flourish command in game. I feel that it would be better to actually reward those who are not afk rather than trying to punish those that are afk, which doesn't seem to work out too well anyway. So wouldn't a "While preparing your next flourishes, you have thought of a particularly fanciful flourish! Do you wish to attempt to do this flourish (300 action)? / Do you wish to continue dancing?" window be at least a partial solution?