Entertainer Archive

I am not an entertainer, but was curious: Why are so many people against /denyservice?

I hear people, mostly non entertainers, say that it is a terrible idea. They go on about how they will be griefed and extorted, how they will be (God forbid) made to *pay* for the service.

My thoughts on this are that if an entertainer griefs, they are only hurting themselves. There are enough entertainers out there that if one is a jerk and griefs, they are easy enough to avoid, and soon word will spread. Reputation can be everything in a game where you have one character per server.

Are people against this simply because they dont like being told they have to pay? Well a weapon smith selling weapons gets to set his own price, as can a medic healing wounds. Why should an entertainer not have that right too? Whether it is wise to use it, or not, seems to me like entertainers should at least have that choice.

I also have a hard time imagining this being used to "extort" funds from other players. I tip about a 20 cr per point of BF, and have never been treated poorly by an entertainer. Why would they start now just because they got the /denyservice command?

The perks of /denyservice I can imagine in abundancy. I have seen audience members do very lewd, rude, and crude things to dancers, and I imagine /denyservice would work wonders for those types =)

So I was curious, why are some people so against this?

I hope you're right, I truly hope you are. The fear is that enough entertainers will use it to force tips that the regular player will lose even MORE respect for the entertainment profession as a whole and tip less across the board.

We already feel a tremendous lack of respect from other players due to AFK macro'ers and the opinion that we don't deserve money since we don't "have any expenses". More and more of the truly good entertainers leave our ranks every day to be replaced with AFK bots, and some are fearful this change, if abused aenough, could accelerate the process.

I remain optimistic that the great majority will not misuse this ability.

- J

I am a master musician and since this idea arose have thought it was a poor one. I think it is an unnecessary command, but I am mostly concerned with the negative impact I think it will have on the class. I already witness entertainers who go off the handle when someone does something like shooting a gun in a cantina or breaking one of the "house rules" which have been setup by someone who wants to play moral police in a public place. With /deny in the game, these people will become even more vigilant in punishing rulebreakers, and will have deny lists a mile long, causing many people to think that entertainers are nothing more than a whiny and/orgreedy group of people (many of whom are, but there is no need to flaunt our garbage).

There are plenty of ways to make money in the game already, yes even for entertainers, and yes without picking up a gun,and I've listed many of them several times.

I think at the very least if this command goes in the game that cantinas should have a heal rate equal to that of a medical center so that people aren't forced to pay for entertainment if they don't want to, just as it works with other wounds.

I also think it is a bad idea. I understand that most people who want it, do not want it for tips... they want to use it on the jerks who /molest and /lick them. I understand that, but I still do not agree with it.

My fear is like that of the other 2 entertainers who have posted: that it will be abused. It will not be abused by people like us -- the dedicated entertainers who love the profession. Rather, it will be abused by the half-baked fly-by-nighters who are trying to make money and get nothing else out of the profession, and who will leave it the second they get whatever they wanted (money, master-hood, etc) out of it. I worry that those people will cause untold amounts of friction between entertainers and the rest of the players, and then they will leave the class when they are done with it, just like the AFKers and, thus, just like the LAMErs, will not have to face the consequences of their own behavior. The dedicated performers, instead, again just like in the case of the LAMErs, will have to suffer the consequences of the /deny hounds.

At this point, my dancer doesn't make most of her money from dancing. She makes it from her other, side hobbies -- marksmanship (killing things for money) and crafting (making things like travel packs and selling them for a few hundred credits). Even so, I don't like the idea of forcing tips, and here's why:

My dancer has fans. She has people who like her. They tip her pretty well (there just are not a lot of them). And every time they tip, it is out of the goodness of their heart. Simply put, I do not want that sort of interaction with people to end. I like it. I would rather have 500 credits in tips, freely and generously given, than 50,000 credits by force.

Now, I won't ever force anyone with /deny, but if other dancers all over the galaxy do, it has the strong potential to poison the atmosphere for everyone, and make players feel like they have to tip now. Instead of being generous, they feel like it is forced. And that destroys the good relationship you have with the fair and upstanding players who have been generous all along.

I for one am sorry to see this command come along. I hope I'm wrong... but I don't think I will be, and if not, then I hope it gets taken out forthwith.

C

I'd say that /deny is neither good nor bad. It likely will have little impact on the game. Here are my speculations.

Forcing tips - This is already in place. It can be fine-tuned a bit, but the idea is still there. A lone entertainer is free to force tips all he wants. He didn't need /deny before, and he doesn't need it now. This will change very little.

Punishing jerks - How many jerks are in need of healing anyway? They're jerks because they want to be jerks. If they're not being healed, then they get to stay in the cantina longer and continue being jerks. Even if they are healed (as they are now), they love getting your goat and will hang around to harass you. Now that school is in session, a lot of the immature players suddenly have less free time (I hope!). The rude behavior may drop off at this time. Some people may attribute this to /deny being effective. It's a possibility, but I suspect that this will change very little.

Not healing opposing factions - This has never been an option before now. If your Rebel buddies got slaughtered and are licking their wounds, you don't want a covert Imperial to heal off of you. This allows someone to truly feel unwelcome. This is a big change for the PvPer, and I'd say it's the one positive aspect of this new command.

Opinions will be lessened - While /deny can be used to harass a patron, the entertainer who does this is already a jerk. He is probably already bothering people with spam and refusals to dance. Someone who gains a negative opinion of entertainers can use /deny as the reason, but he is actually complaining about a jerk entertainer. We must do the same thing as before and show that entertainers can be better than that. I predict very little change here too.

The /deny feature has no real teeth to it. From what I have seen, it won't help us out, but it won't bite us in the rear either. It's similar to the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy of the American military. Nothing prevented homosexuals from joining the military. After the policy was enacted, homosexuals just didn't need to lie to get in. Same basic concept here. We can do the same things and be harassed in the same way as the days before /deny.

But we'll have to see if I'm right on that. Maybe there is something not obvious to me.

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Chessack wrote:


I would rather have 500 credits in tips, freely and generously given, than 50,000 credits by force.

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Could you take a brief break from Fantasyland to tell me where I can go to get these 50k credits? TIA!

to put this as simply as it can be put... somewhere i heard that nothing is inherintly good or bad... the title 'good or bad' is given based on the intentions of its use...

in this case the 'good' way is to use it for the reasons the developers have allowed the command to be put in the game, to try and lighten the /report load from people griefing/harrassing entertainers...

the 'bad' way was also told by the developers as the only argument that has kept it out of the game this long... to EXTORT other players for tips... this is why you cant /denyService <playername> and the deny list doesnt stay when you log out... that way you can just do a /who on your planet, deny everyone on it and wait for them to come to you... you MUST have a target for /deny or it does nothing.

the only downside to this implimentation is the fact that for those that use it the way the devs intended, they cant set up a persistant /deny list to load when they log in(if they did something to deserve /deny, you wont ever want to let them heal from you again anyways). but i think its a fair tradeoff than to make it easy to extort players

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You_Myst wrote:

to put this as simply as it can be put... somewhere i heard that nothing is inherintly good or bad... the title 'good or bad' is given based on the intentions of its use...

in this case the 'good' way is to use it for the reasons the developers have allowed the command to be put in the game, to try and lighten the /report load from people griefing/harrassing entertainers...

the 'bad' way was also told by the developers as the only argument that has kept it out of the game this long... to EXTORT other players for tips... this is why you cant /denyService and the deny list doesnt stay when you log out... that way you can just do a /who on your planet, deny everyone on it and wait for them to come to you... you MUST have a target for /deny or it does nothing.

the only downside to this implimentation is the fact that for those that use it the way the devs intended, they cant set up a persistant /deny list to load when they log in(if they did something to deserve /deny, you wont ever want to let them heal from you again anyways). but i think its a fair tradeoff than to make it easy to extort players

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There is no extortion.

Have any of you who think it might be abused by many people to get tips spend a single thought on how they would have to do it ? How much work of an actual real non-afk person at the keyboard it would be ? If people would be willing to spend this amount, they wouldn't bedancing, they'd be running missions. It's less work for more money. There will always be spammers, scammers and idiots, and some will find /deny to play with. But I bet we'll be getting more complains due to people unable to click listen than actual entertainers using this feature to get money. Why ? Because it would needreal work. And I don't know someone who is into entertaining to put in work for money. It's about fun in the first place.

I think its pretty cool actually. All the entertainers so far I've seen have been very mature players. I'm sure most won't be forcing people to tip. Doctors don't have to heal you in the Med Center if they don't want to. Same should apply for the entertainers. Would you want to be stuck in a Cantina all day dancing and playing music, or doing missions, fighting and making good money?
The entertainers know who are cheapskates and NEVER tip, I'm sure they will be warned. But there are those that ALWAYS tip and those that tip maybe half the time. I always tip the entertainers (except if I'm just in there to chat with people, but I still "watch" them so they get XP), so I have no prob with this.

I hope the entertainers will tell people to get rid of large pets (Bantha, Rancors, AT-ST's, etc) that are inside the cantina or they'll refuse service to them (ps.....I don't mind people with smaller pets in the Cantina's, squall, jax, baby pets, etc).

Entertainers are really underappreciated until you REALLY need one and the cantina is empty............

I was and still am totally against the /deny just for the sole potential of it being abused and as a few others have said.. give entertainers a bad name. Its bad enough with the herds of AFKs and the, what I refer to as "tip whores" whos sole purpose it is to beg or tease their way into tips, rather than entertaining for the fact that its a really fun and social way to enjoy SWG. As a side note, I'm very pleased to say that a good bit of the time I do better on tips that my tip begging/teasing counterparts because a lot of players really like being greeting when they come in and casual bantering about how their hunting is going or whatever little chitchatty conversation we happen to have. Women I've noticed lately tend to big big tippers too, and a lot of the reason they tell me is because they are ignored by female entertainers most of the time if theres a male character in the cantina. I personally wish that the proposal for somehow boosting healing to specific people had instead been implemented. Maybe its just me, but I personally prefer to give special treatment and added convinience to the customers who treat me well, over the negativity of denying service. Really most of the time people who are creeps, are there just to BE creeps, more often than not, they arent there for the BF heals

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nvoigt wrote:
And I don't know someone who is into entertaining to put in work for money. It's about fun in the first place.

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I am in entertaining to put in work for money, and I do it very well.

If you are into entertaining to get money for your work, you actually made a poor decision. Any other profession gets more money for the same amount of work. If your motivation is money, you won't last.