Entertainer Archive

In this thread "CC" shall henceforth be used in place of Crowd Control. Crowd Control is a method when fighting be it PvE or PvP that effectively "controls" the target for a predetermined period of time in order for the threat they present to be neutralized.

Now, my wife and I were talking about the recent changes to Knock Down and various delay moves and the following idea occurred to us. 1.) We rarely see any entertainers/dancers/musicians out and about on our hunts, and 2.) the game currently has no real CC.

Along these lines we thought, "Hey, why can't the Entertainers of the game be given a reason other than blasting the bad guys away with the rest of us more specialized combatants whenever we group?" The answer is CC.With proper balancing and perhaps some tweaking CC given to Entertainers in variousforms as they progress up their respective profession would be well deserved additionwhile giving us what every combat group sorely lacks... some form of Crowd CONTROL.

Before today's Patch it has always been the meleers themselveskeeping their enemies down while at thesame time dealing all the damage.Up to this point,people had a grey area on their place in combat. Entertainersare being passed over on higher end groups due totheirpassive main profession.

Examples of this? Dancers could perhapshave aform of dance where they have to first target the creature/player and start up a dance called, say, Mesmerize. This dancekeeps thattarget in place andunable to attack as long as no damage is dealt to it. Also, the dancer can not stray targets. Perhaps levels of specialty couldcreate an AreaEffect ornumber of things effected at once.

Musicians could get a form of thesame or perhaps to make them different could get a Stun. This would be much less of a duration(Moreso like the current KD but with differences) butstop the target as well as make it unable to attack while allowing players to attack it.

These are just ideasand I might be rambling... The idea of giving a class that yourarely seeanywhere but Cantinas or Parties something useful incombatmight be something interesting to see.

Anyway, those are my thoughts and perhapsit has been mentionedbefore and gone thruin great detail. If so I apologize and must have missed it whilst scanning the pages. Let me know what you think.Remember, just an idea.

P.S. And yes, I know it's been done in other MMORPGs and I know it is immensely hard to balance.

Cheers

I like the notion of giving entertainer based classes something to contribute to a group that's engaged in combat, but I had a slightly different idea. http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=entertainer&message.id=3748

Now, on-topic:

I'm not sure the idea of a mesmerizing dance or tune is really in keeping with SWG. As I said elsewhere, I think that crosses the line into the "bard" type of fantasy-game entertainer - something which the developers definitely do not want. A different suggestion would be the granting of some bonuses - like defense or damage... but these too tend to fall under a different profession - that of Squad Leader. (At least, if they ever get it fixed.)

I like the thought you put into this, though. Do you have any other ideas on how an entertainer could contribute to a battle that's ongoing? Many of them want to escape the cantinas, and I'd like to find ways to help them do so.

Music Sooths the savage beasts.

This is an old saying and i see no reason why it wouldn't appily to SWG as well. With the recient patch effecting KD and supression there is almost no crowd controle left in the field. Most comminly there 3 to 4 mob's around any given lair and some times more. I have no idea how large or small ofa group is considered ideal in swg (usually the groups i'm in number form 3-5 people), but if all the mobs are in agro range that means each person in the party has to fight and kill their own mob. This is a feat that is difficult enough for me (master pistolier/eXpert BH) let alone some one that's still eXp grinding.

A "snake chamer's" mezmerise, or a "pied piper" that could drawl mobs away to a safe distance would allow the party to focus their efforts on one mob at a time. In addition as prel/I'bn said, it would give the entertainer profession another dimention other then: Bar fly.

For those that think mesmerising might not fit with the SGC theam, motif, or continunity; isn't MesmeriZer one of the in game titles amongst those that entertain? <---rethorical question

Sincerly,

Samsara Six-Gun

Master Gunfighter, eXpert Bounty Hunter