Image Designer Archive

Ahem I'm a she I told you to please not PM with ideas that involve removing half of ID's functionality (all the plastic surgery related skills) or the removal of other Entertainer professions. Your first PM was not very clear and I thought you were suggesting removing the medical skills to be a new elite medic profession. The PM suggesting the removal of Dancer and Musician as professions led to my asking you to please not PM such suggestions. Shut up is not something I would PM someone.

Message Edited by Kwee on 06-17-2004 09:46 AM

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Kwee wrote:

Shut up is not something I would PM someone.

Message Edited by Kwee on 06-17-2004 09:46 AM

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Not even me?

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Neige wrote:

Thanks for your advice. now consider the SWG advanced medical profession, and tell me if you feel any sense of kinship with your real life profession :

- do you sit wailing on the pavement in front of airport, proposing doping to the bewildered crowd ?

I don't know if you know of the doping scandals in professional cycling, but do you remember the Tour de France a couple of years back when all those cyclists were arrested? Who was it that gave them the drugs that made em cycle faster? A doctor.

- do you cure slashes, burns, poinsoning, diseases, with a little hand gesture going "pschiiit" ?

Yes, I can cure slashes, burns, poisoning, and disease. Even in Star Wars no doctor uses a silly hand gesture, but that's got more to do with artwork and animations that are oversimplified than with gameplay.

or

- do you take part in gang wars by spreading virulent diseases and nerve gas ?

That's not a doctor, but a combat medic if I'm well informed. However, biological warfare still has more to do with medicine than lipstick. Virologists and bacteriologists (the people who know how to deal with the agents of biological warfare) often have a medical background.

- can youcure slashes, burns, poinsoning, diseases, with a little hand gesture going "pschiiit" , on many people at once, wich are 50m away from you ?

Again, this refers to combat medics not doctors, I think, and I've gone into the little hand gesture thing. Still it's healing people, curing people, enhancing people's health by taking away disease and pain. That is what being a doctor is all about, not making people pretty.

Yeah, guess you didnt. Some of this is "way beyond the scope of modern medecine" eh ?

My point remains that injured characters go see a doctor in SWG, injured people go see a doctor in real life. Let's not make a fuss about trivial details like a pschiiting noise - that is what doctors do: they heal and cure people. The thought a doctor takes care of my body so everything to do with my body must be done by a doctor is simplistic and false.

A doctor's business is your health, not just your body. This might seem like a stupid distinction but it's not. A tattoo artist deals with your body too, a hair dresser too, or a pedicure, a masseur, a trainer, a prostitute, the list goes on and on. Some of this may be "way beyond the scope of modern medicine", hell, some is even way beyond the realm of possibilities,but not all of it is so bizarre and strange. Even in the future (or distant past) the most efficient way to lose weight is still a diet, the most efficient way to grow muscles is still to work out. It's not a coincidence that the title at Body Form 4 is personal trainer, not plastic surgeon. Don't be so quick to dismiss the thought that real life medicine and SWG medicine are so very different. After all, the devs did name the professions "Medic" and "Doctor", didn't they? Yes, I do feel a kinship with my real life profession. Sure not all the details are the same, but that goes for all professions here doesn't it? It's a game, and as such a necessary simplification of the real, or imagined, world.

Image designers take some interest in other entertainer professions because, basically, its forced upon them.

That is your perception and as such it is as valid as the next one. There are a lot of Image Designers however, that don't mind the other entertainer professions, in fact, there are quite a few that have a Master title in either Dancer or Musician as well. Not because they were made to, but because they like to.

And most of the stuff i do as aan image designer (changing bone structure, skin and hair pigmentation, fine tuning physiological functions) as all to do with starwarsy medicine and not with wtarwarsy hairdresser.

How can you maintain that changing hair pigmentation has nothing to do with starwarsy hairdresser? Then why do I go to the hair dresser's to dye my hair and not to hospital? Fine tuning physiological functions? Apart from the stat migration (and bear in mind that was only a later addition to our profession) we have no useful purpose other than appearances, and we do not meddle in physiological functions. I would maintain that statistics like health, action and mind andtheir secondaries can improve by training. A person can take more mind wounds if he has a strong personality, which can be trained in psychotherapy presumable, he can do more dancing before becoming exhausted through endurance training.

I did not mean to be insulting to dancers and musicians (not that the vast majority of the AFK ones would notice).

It is very bad form to insult people by saying that their profession should be abolished and then, when people want to confront you with that, say that you didn't mean to be insulting. Well, you may not have meant it, but you have done it nonetheless.

I'd be curious to know the proportional breakup of professions and how many master dancers and musicians there are in SWG, before and after the end of the hologrinding madness of course.

So would I. I think there are many more Dancers and Musicians than there are Image Designers. But, numbers aren't important. Why should we abolish a profession if it's working alright and if people are enjoying themselves playing as Dancers or Musicians.

Mywhole critique of your post has skipped over one crucial item though. I think I have made a rather strong case that Image Designing has very little to do with medicine, but I have not made clear why I feel it is at home in the Entertainer tree. I have a few thoughts on that though.

1. From a game play point of view, there are a lot of similarities. Like Dancers and Entertainers we do not craft, use resources orfight.


2. Both Image Designing and the other Entertainer professions are very social in nature. One could argue that Doctors are social beings too, but they spend a much shorter time with their patients than we do with our clients, so we get to interact more with them, much like the Dancers and Musicians in a cantina.


3. Musicians and Dancers are performing artists. There are no plastic arts in this game (I'm not counting the paintings Architects can make, cos they only get to craft them from a pre-created schematic). Image Designers can be said to be artists too, and our clients to be our canvas.


4. Image Designing serves no critical function in the game, and as such is merely there for fun. One could argue that the only professions that come close are the Dancers and Musicians - their trade is for fun too, only they get a useful feature with it, the ability to heal mind wounds and to buff.

Admittedly it's not a very strong case, but there's always the argument that if it shouldn't be inthe Entertainer tree, then what should it be in? Even if Entertainer doesn't quite cover Image Design, it covers it a lot better than the other trees.

Thewt of Infinity

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