Entertainer Archive

I posted this on the correspondent forum in the hopes of some red name attention. I will also be contacting a few more directly to bring it to their attention. I've also run this by a few members of the community and other correspondents to make sure I'm speaking for more than just myself. Reposting it here so people know what I'm up to.

I have come asking for entertainers to get some attention many times, and there always seems to be something more important. I am sure NewJedi, Panthu and those who have come before have gotten the same answer. When will we get a different answer? Isn't it time there was time for entertainers?

I don't think people realize the significance of what's going on. I'm not talking about a profession in trouble. I never really have been. I'm talking about an entire play style that has been nearly completely ignored for the past year, and continues to be ignored.

This goes far beyond a profession being ignored. To use Pikemen as an example, if the profession is never fixed, people can still go Swordsman, Teras Kasi, or possibly even rifleman or Pistoleer, and still get roughly the same play style. If entertainer is never fixed, the people have nowhere to go to get the same play style. The result is atrophy in the profession, and those who stick around becoming bitter, resentful and cynical.

Yes, there are people who have a lot of fun playing entertainers. Typically, they either take a bit of sadistic glee in mocking repetitive macros, or they decided the game mechanics offer nothing for them, so they run off with other entertainers to have fun, deserting the cantina which is supposed to be the home of the entertainer, moving on to out of the way places where they won't be bothered.

The tone in the entertainer forums has been becoming very hostile and defensive lately. Panthu has been doing a stellar job of keeping things under control on the Dancer forum, but I can't imagine she can keep that up forever. Correspondents are supposed to be a communication pipeline, not crowd control. The Musician forum is just about ready to bite anyone's head off. The entertainer forum is considered by some as just a place to post macros.

Why are things so bad?

• Since launch, there has been nearly no enhancements that benefit the social play style. There were a few attempts made. Some of them backfired and made things worse. Some were so poorly implemented as to be worthless. To my recollection, the only thing to help entertainers and the social play style has been the new droids.


• There has been changes to the game that have been detrimental to the social play style. The largest of course being holo-grinding. That, of course is being fixed, but there has already been severe damage to the play style, and until something is done beyond just the Jedi revamp, that will be perpetuated by buff-bots, heal bots, lot/cantina mules, and the like.


• The perception is that entertainers are routinely forgotten. The force skills had something for nearly every profession except entertainers. One of the devs personally went into the smuggler forum to apologize for the revamp being pushed back and assure them that there were people who would be working on the profession, and not a peep to apologize to entertainers that their first new content has been delayed over half a year from the first announced date. People of the entertainer forum are starting to give up hoping for change and instead hoping to find ways to still have fun despite everything.


• Bugs that have an impact on entertainers are left untouched until it is discovered they also have an impact on combat, when they are fixed in short order.


• There is nothing game-mechanics wise that a live entertainer can offer which a bot can't do better. Nothing..

There are a few things on the roadmap for entertainers currently. The new entertainer missions that hit test center recently, for one. I would love to be able to try them out and see how it works, but it doesn't seem to work yet. And the Hutt casino, but as Gary likes to point out, schedules can change. If you don't want people to get upset when it slips, the only other option for players is to treat anything that isn't on test center already as if it doesn't exist, so it can either be seen as a broken promise, or as something that doesn't exist at all.

But that is quite irrelevant. A theme park or adventure does not fix a profession. Do you think Droid Engineers would have considered their profession fixed if instead of the droid publish, they were given a place they could go to research new droid chassis, but they were still stuck with the same modules in them? I know the team is excited about it. I can't wait to see what all the buzz is about, and some of the rumors I heard from Fan Fest sound very interesting indeed. But in the end, it is just a distraction if the rest of the profession is still broken. Out of sight, out of mind only works until you have to look again.

Perhaps the worse thing of all is the new player experience. People often talk about how things are for current players. Who sits down to think about what it's like for a new player? Image Design is a good example of this. It's getting very hard to find masters these days as the masters move on to other professions or other games, and the experience of gaining master isn't enticing enough to fill the turnover. I had someone come to me looking for an image designer the other day . they had checked all the tents already, and when I gave them a few names, they had already tried them, and found them all to have dropped image design.

The same thing has been happening with entertainers. As people give up on seeing any improvements, few are able to or willing to tough out the experience of starting from the bottom. And it is a self perpetuating problem; entertainer is a profession played by macro not because that's the most fun thing to do, but because when someone comes looking to learn, they are given a macro by one of the many who learned in the same way.

I'm not just making conjecture here. There was a post on Monday on the entertainer forum. It was from someone who had bought the game on Sunday and already by Monday was sick of dealing with the bots packing cantinas. I suspect this one will persevere and stick with the profession at least a bit longer. They picked up SWG because of the types of play it offers, and they aren't ready to give up on that yet. But for this one lone voice come to speak up, how many more are there who have just silently faded when they didn't find what they wanted?

Communication was asked for in the past. And it was given to a point.. What was initially to be an opening of communication to entertainers turned into a flood of questions from everyone, which very effectively threw a wrench in the works. There was never any communication opened with entertainers. The perception of the players here is that entertainers are something to be brushed off. I didn't even get the warm-fuzzies from the entertainer panel that I keep hearing about from other professions. All I got was a bunch of "It's that way because this is how entertainers are supposed to work." Well guess what; they aren't working.

I hope you've read all of this and think about it, because listening and understanding is an important part of communication, perhaps more important than talking. While from a technical standpoint, the entertainer professions are working well . players can go and get healed and buffed . from a game play aspect, the social game play is so broken as to be almost non-existent. Pikemen can still swing at things (Hitting may be a different matter), squad leaders can bark orders, jedi can wage grand battles, bounty hunters can track elusive targets, but entertainers are stuck competing with seas of bots and the perception they give the other players in order to play their profession.

It's too late for communication. The players have become too cynical to put any faith in it. Action is needed. And I don't mean a bullet item on some to be determined date in a future roadmap, I mean ACTION. The kind of action wookiees got when they pressed the armor issue. Answer me honestly, when was the last time any development (Not art) resources have been dedicated to entertainers, that was not to hastily patch up something that became a combat exploit? When was the last time any design work at all was done on the social game play aspect of SWG? I've been patiently waiting along side many entertainers for the time to come. We've known there has been something in the works since August, when some of the fan sites hosted interviews that mentioned the motion capture sessions. In two months, that will be a year of waiting. A year is a long time to wait. Patience only goes so far, and the patience of the community is nearly run dry.

I wish I had Panthu's ability to keep spirits high. But I just don't have it in me. I see the writing on the wall, and I can't just ignore that and tell people everything is great. I'm not sure many have the patience to wait out JTL on the tiny glimmer of hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel which isn't an oncoming train. The action that is needed is now, not in 6 months.

I've tried offering big suggestions, and have encountered either there not being enough time, or that it doesn't fit with the social aspect of entertainer. So I tried offering little suggestions, and was told there isn't even time for that. I don't know what there is left to do, short of pitching in some time to help with the Intergalactic Entertainer Memorial on Bria. I'm sure I could come up with a few names they've missed off the top of my head.

I'm sure some of you just skipped to the end. For those who didn't, thank you for taking the time to hear me out. Now I implore you to consider that entertainers are as much a game as Jedi or Droid Engineers, and consider such when allocating development resources.

Message Edited by Tiaga on 06-11-2004 03:59 AM

I know a few of you have already seen this or heard NewJedi talk about it, but I wanted to post a link in here as support. Tiaga and I don't really have that much in common as Entertainer players (other than both of us being insanely fun, like all Ents ), but when I first read this I said "Yes! That's it exactly, that's what someone needs to say to them!"

I loved hearing all of the ideas the Devs had about Entertainers at the Fan Fest... but they were mostly talked about in private-ish (nothing was really totally private at FF) conversations. It certainly wasn't anything we heard in the Ent Panel.

This thing that Tiaga has put together is so dead on and is such pure truth, I really am hoping it will show the Devs where we are coming from in a way we haven't been able to make clear in the past.

I hope you all can support this as much as I do.

*clicky*

Message Edited by Ravanne_Esi on 06-11-2004 07:00 AM

Tiaga, you've captured the very essence of the state of all entertainers. Beautifuly posted.

And I have to agree with you about Panthu. Only a month ago, after being a dancer for 6 months and preaching the "things will get better" speech over and over, I found myself, as you said, bitter and ignored. It took Panthu to break me from that. Although I'm still not 100% confident, at least my posts are more constructive.

I've said this many many times in the dancer forums. If a Red Tag, ANY Red Tag, would at least post on our boards to only say "We're here and we're listening", that would be a moral boost of the highest degree! I've been on the Dancer boards for months and have not EVER seen a Dev post anything. That by itself is discouraging.

Thank you for this post, Tiaga.