Musician Archive

Even though it is really our only source of income, I'd welcome it. Anything to get rid of the bots.

Unfortunately, I've had enough. It's funny how many people (even other entertainers) claim to support live entertainment, then turn around and use a bot within five minutes. Cancel button pushed. SOE won't get another dime of mine until they decide that either our profession is a failed experiment and replaced with buff terminals, or that our profession is important enough to actually have to PLAY it.

Mo'Ste Elosk
Mo'Set Elosk
-----------------------------------------
May the Force grant us
the Wisdom to discover the Right,
the Will to choose it,
and the Strength to make it endure.

Um... yeah... I get 500k a week from buffs (save for november cause i will be buffing free to honor what i told the community...) If they take buffs away what are we going to do? go out and the streets and beg? They do need to do something about buffbots but removing entertainers is not that thing...

Xiste of the Intrepid Server. Master Musician, Master Entertainer... Musician Forever

Yacht Parties Available after 10-27-04. E-mail Xiste for info on Yacht Parties...

I think they should stay, but possibly a system that requires you to actively administer them would be best. perhaps someting like:

"This patron wants to hear flourish 5" and if you don't do that, then the buff won't be administered or will take far far longer.

Though with doctors it's different, if doc buffs were removed people would need doctors more not letss.

Tokalar
Furball first class
Starsider

LoCree

Master Musician of Talus, Sunrunner

My main complaint about the buffbots is that people who have combat professions are relying on mind buffs. These very same people are the ones that accumulate battle fatigue and mind wounds. So... now they have lots of battle fatigue from combat, their mind buff wears out. What do they do? Pop into the cantina/tavern and get a mind buff, thus not only buffing themselves but consequentially eliminating ALL of their battle fatigue and mind wounds. To whom does that experience go? To the buffer, of course. But, I ask, Does the buffer need that experience? Absolutely not. In fact, many of them actually include in their macrospam a request for the buffee to first visit a non-buffing entertainer to heal their wounds, yet how many of those players actually honor this request? Very few, if any at all. Just take a minute to think about it. A player with say, 200+BF and 200 mind wounds nets an entertainer 1k+ of experience, yet they can heal almost all if not all of it in one 3-5 minute buff session. We entertainers desperatelyneed the entertainer healing XP, but these afk buffers are sucking up a vast majority of that XP. The only people who tend to visit the cantina for wounds is either lower level players who aren't in need of buffs yet or high level players who aren't planning to actively participate in combat. The players who are in combat the most often are the biggest source of healing XP for us, yet sadly enough, us entertainers very rarely see even a small portion of that experience.

I hope SOE will soon realise the plight of the entertainers and the difficulty buffbots are causing us to master our professions.

I think i've made my point clear enough.

- Tjaden -Tjaden_Flurry - Apophis'_Flurry- T'jaden_briaFizzle_Flurry - Acrien_Flurry
Station Pass'd - Now with 95% more Planetside, 95% less SWGMarkov Server: Tjaden - TR Jorlu - NC Aufcoch - VS HamNcheese - VS
No Longer Cancelled...

I have such a different experience from many and don't see buffs as an issue but a benefit. I've been a master fortwo months now. I know that is short compared to many here but what I've seen is that there are still high end players who come to cantinas. I've also seen that there are people who have only used buff bots who actuallylearn to enjoy a live entertainer. I am part of a small ATK team who regularly plays in Theed in an alcove. My customer base has grown daily for three very key reasons.

1. I'm there during certain key times, like early evening when everyone is starting their day

2. I'm patient and try to be friendly, but I have told people to find someone else when they are overly rude and gotten the support of other combat types when this occurs.

3. I'm friendly and talk to the people. A lot of my customer base is coming back because of this very reason and those same people are tipping more than they have in the past.

If you don't want to treat entertaining as a business in some ways then you won't succeed. I treat it as both a great way to spend time with friends, meet people, and do business. To do business you have to be available, we don't get a vendor we have to be there. Surprisingly it's the same way for tailors, my lady is a master tailor and has a well supplied shop and vendor. Easily 80 percent of her business is from tells and custom orders. As frustrating as it is for me whenshestops talking to take and complete a large order I know it's how her business works. In the same fashion our's works by being there and building a reputation. I have gone from making 10k a night to making 50 to 60 and I don't set a price and don't care how much they tip because I make tons gathering resources and don't need it. Yesterday (Sunday) I got on early, dropped by the cantina for an hour to be available for people logging in, went to dath and hunted, spent a large part of the day wandering Loc to helpmy lady, Imaji,with the Nym's missions, then returned to the cantina that evening to spend time with friends and be available when my customers logged on. I made 200k doing that and didn't ask one person for a single credit.

If you want entertainer to be an important part of the mix then leave buffs but also treat that part as a business. If all you want is a social environment then chat in group, ignore the people in the cantina, and kill the profession. AFK will only go away when the mechanics are removed. Players will only respect entertainers when we respect them and treat the entire system as a whole.Removing AFK will not buy us any respect, we have to earn that. I'm drawing people away from buff bots and afktainers. I'm getting novice entertainers who want to be in my group because a larger portion of the clientelle is coming to our group off to the side. I'm getting people who like to come back, tell me how their day went, and listen to my music because it's different, it's fun to chat to someone, and they enjoy it as much as I do, if you don't enjoy it anymore then you will fail.

If you have taken the bad for too long and can't see the good anymore then take a break. I know I have to do this in other areas. PvE became horribly boring for me but now I enjoy it again because it isn't all I do. I recommend that people not take a pure entertainer or pure combat profession. A mix lets you do so much more and not burn out on any one thing.

Elwyn LyteFoot - Corbantis server

This is a very good topic for discussion, so 5 stars for you. Just because I may disagree with a post doesn't mean its a bad post. This post in particular has substance and is worthy of discussion.

I would love to see the removal of the Buffbotsas well as theAFKtainers. With your proposed solution here, I think it would be about the equivilant of using a 16 pound sledge hammer to drive a finish nail. Yes it would remove the buffbot for good, but it takes away a skill that we can use to help our economic situation.

I am still holding out hope that they will remove the ability to use recursive macros, and then I hope they continue to tweak and refine what can and can't be macroed so that people who actualy play entertainer classes can be an integral part of the world again and be part of the norm rather than the rarity.

I am looking forward to the combat "sandbox" to get underway, so that our professions can hopefully be revitalized. We are suffering from a very bad reputation from the rest of the community, in that our class is the most easily AFK macroed, people have learned not to value us when they can easily go see the buffbot / AFKtainer (for free if they wish) which is availible to them almost around the clock. So they do not have to spend time to search for a live entertainer.

Once upon a time, you might not always find a master in a cantina, but you could just about always find a novice, even if that novice was just a combat player who picked up novice entertainer to help himself and his friends.

I personally feel we have become to dependant on buffs, in any form, in this game. We now have a mass of people who feel they can not compete / play the game unless they are fully buffed with everything availible to them, and then on top of that, the "solo groups" are rampant now. I can understand why people want the solo groups, and I respect, and even encourage people to solo when they wish too.

However, the solo groups are, IMHO, hurting the game just as much as buffbots are killing the entertainer professions, because without a strong GCW to give the combat types a reason to play ( An outlet for their combat styles) what else are you going to do when you have done virtually everything else in the game. So now people grind FS for a secondary slot or jedi character.

JTL will help a bit to spread people out again, but until we have the combat rebalance, GCW overhaul and ( for the entertainers ) the removal of the recursive macro, I believe the game will continue to be more and more stagnat and people will continue to leave. Of course once the items I just mentioned are fixed, in particular the GCW, then we should see a stablization of people and then an infux of new people who have been told by their friends to come and check out the "action" in SWG.

I could be overly optimistic, but I don't think so. We all know the core problems with the game, and if you got to play the JTL beta, you know that it went from almost unplayable thanks to the many, many bugs and unfinishable missions to something that will be fun for a lot of people, myself included.

Sorry for the length of the post, but I hope it was worth reading......

Durney

Master Entertainer / Master Musician / Master Image Designer

*a couple of typos *

WOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWO
KWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKW
OKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOK
WOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWO
KWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKW
OKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOK
WOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWOKWO

I would welcome such a change as well.

No, it wouldn't do away with AFKing. I think the likely answer to the "why they do it" question is simply that a lot of people want the easiest possible shortcut to the end. But it would stop buffbots, and there are a lot of things that would be improved dramatically, in my opinion, for musicians and dancers.

Regarding income potential, I think that it wouldn't be as difficult to instate a new method of deriving income than it would be to somehow reconcile with buffbots. Income concerns would be problematic if buffs were done away with and that was the end of it... obviously, something else would have to take its place. The least inspired answer could be to revise the methods of entertainer mission terminal payouts to account for performer skill levels, akin to the way it works for combat missions. I'm sure that there could be much more fun and creative ways to implement new income possibilities. Buffs were not the only way that we could make money.

But moreso than all of these things, perhaps, was an idea that someone else posted a little while ago (forgive me, I don't recall who it was, and it's probably not worth a search) about the pacing of the cantina visits. Before buffs, players would enter the cantina after going out to fight/hunt - the purpose was to clear up battle fatigue, and relax after doing their thing. This scenario is more conducive to a fun and relaxing atmosphere in the cantinas, as it's the time to wind down a bit, or do a bit of bragging/post mortembefore either logging off or running out to do it all over again.

However, with buffs in the picture, patrons come to the cantina before the fight/hunt. Perhaps they've just logged on, and are amped to go run cash missions. Or, they've been called to PvP... and in a hurry... you get the idea. Point is... there is no patience up front, it's go go go go now now now! In a very big way, I think,this is the kind of feeling in the cantina atmosphere that's made it such an unpleasant place for so manynow.

In that sense then, perhaps the removal of entertainer buffing would do much, much more for our gameplay than simply getting rid of buffbots. I think that the psychology behind the purpose of the cantina visit is likely the greater culprit behind the misery that is the cantina in this age. And I have to agree that it makes sense that a cantina visit as a preperatory step for battle is not conducive to what the social players' collective playstyle, in general, is all about. Some combat players may resent the concept of being "forced" to come see entertainers through the BF mechanic. Any feelings of resentment there are not being helped with the inclusion of the hurry hurry of a pre-battle cantina visit.

---

Speaking only for myself, I like having the ability to buff, and I would hate to lose that ability. I do think buffbots are a huge problem, but SOE is already committed to removing them via other means -- namely, removal of long-running recursive macros. I prefer that approach, personally.

Nonetheless, I'm glad you raised the issue, and I'll keep lurking here to see what others think.

I love being able to do mind enhancement. My primary goal as a Musician has actually always been more focused on healing versus the performance issue. I thoroughly enjoy the performance, though, and when I wasn't worried about where all my points were spent, I was a Master Entertainer/Composer just for the instruments and songs (back before buffs existed).

On the other hand, I think that because they are perceived as so vital, and it's so easy to AFK a character to master in both dance and music...that's a huge part of why we get, as Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "no respect."

However, if the developers can't come up with a way to make our healing and buffing at least as active as medics'/doctors', I'd rather they gave the mind buffs and healingto Combat Medics in the form of craftable packs, the Fatigue Healing to Squad Leaders, put stat migration back to the way it used to be and made all the Entertaining skills take 0 skill points, like piloting. At least then you'd know the people playing music and dancing and image designing were doing it because they enjoyed it.

Col. Tarot v Starsider
Elder Master Entertainer and AXIS M.I.L.F.
Mathom © Starsider
Entertainer

easy way to make entertainer / dancer / musician missions worth doing and give you money / something to do is:

Just make the missions like the new dancer and musician quests for the new dance and song. So you entertain X ammount of NPCs, and just have it so it lasts for either X ammount of time and you have to do X things when it comes up on your screen (as if its a request), or like those missions that the audence likes X flourish or song. If not then have it as a crowd that will continue to watch so long as you hold there interests (by performing what they want to see, maybe having a simple gauge of opinion that pops up ever 10-20 seconds to see if they like it) and if you continue doing the same thing they get bored and leave, or ask for different requests and if you dont do them they leave. BUT with the second system, work out a fair pay depending on how long you were there and how entertained the audience is.

You could have this stuff in theaters &cantinas PC and NPC ones, or make it like the corvette where you have privite rooms for it, or maybe playing for a group on a space cruise. With either you could have larger apperance fees for bigger bands / troups of dancers. So like the missions terminals on planets go on threat rating, you will have an entertainment rating. OR maybe have it like on the new quests where you have to earn an amount of advertising status by getting people to watch you, then you can have bigger gigs based on how many people you entertained, so how well the news has traveled that you are a hot new act.

Trouble is with that is that it might end up pulling almost all the non-afk characters into doing that and leaving only theafk ones in the cantinas.

Keldorion of Chimaera + others on other servers when i deside to reactivate them.