Musician Archive
Thread: If they are going to get rid of buffbots they need to make buffs easier to obtain
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Glum_Moonfist
Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:16 am
#1
If AFK buffbots are going away they better figure out a way to help players that play at off-peak hours. Some of you say that mind buffs arent a neccessity, but those players obviously dont go on alot of DWB runs, Corvette missions, high end PvE, or PvP where mind buffs make all the difference. One idea off the top of my head is:
Dancer/Musician Videos - Entertainers could make recordings and sell them on the bazaar so players could get buffs around the clock. Playback terminals could be put in cantinas or theaters for players to watch them.
While I am happy that entertaining will now be a viable profession, I simply dont have confidence that there will be enough available entertainers for those of us that play late hours. I dont want AFK bots ruining your experience but I also dont want the lack of mind buffs ruining mine.
Dancer/Musician Videos - Entertainers could make recordings and sell them on the bazaar so players could get buffs around the clock. Playback terminals could be put in cantinas or theaters for players to watch them.
While I am happy that entertaining will now be a viable profession, I simply dont have confidence that there will be enough available entertainers for those of us that play late hours. I dont want AFK bots ruining your experience but I also dont want the lack of mind buffs ruining mine.
Gknee
Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:21 am
#2
I know that at some hours it's hard to find us. Hopefully the next change will be fixing the registration so you can see where the entertainers are playing. That will help you out in the wee hours 
Warryyr
Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:22 am
#3
Why not consider taking up an entertainer profession, then? If there's a huge demand and little supply, fill the supply and make a mint. If you play off-peak hours, then fill the void in the game that has distinct needs not being filled!
If there were no weaponsmiths around, wouldn't someone take up weaponsmithing to fill the void? Sure, and they'd make a fortune, too.
Glum_Moonfist
Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:29 am
#4
Gknee wrote:I know that at some hours it's hard to find us. Hopefully the next change will be fixing the registration so you can see where the entertainers are playing. That will help you out in the wee hours
That would be helpful for alot of professions. You should be able to verify if there are Docs in Med Centers, Entertainers in Cantinas, & IDs in the tents since they are so crucial for people's gameplay.
Glum_Moonfist
Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:39 am
#5
Warryyr wrote:Why not consider taking up an entertainer profession, then? If there's a huge demand and little supply, fill the supply and make a mint. If you play off-peak hours, then fill the void in the game that has distinct needs not being filled!If there were no weaponsmiths around, wouldn't someone take up weaponsmithing to fill the void? Sure, and they'd make a fortune, too.
Wish I could!
I've got my Swords/Doc on one account for PvE & PvP, and I have another account with my armorsmith. Hopefully you are right and players will fill the void since it sounds like Entertainers will be able to make a living off of their profession now. I just know at night currently, I see very few players in the cantina and finding a live entertainer available with both music and dance buffs is a challenge.
TheSkankinSpiv
Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:43 am
#6
Let us buff ourselves!
Screw the hardship of applying the buffs!
Huzzah!
NewJedi
Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:14 pm
#7
I think this change will result in more live Musicians on your server. I myself will be more interested in healing and buffing now that I won't have to compete with bots. But yes, fixing /register sure would help. That issue is on our top-five list now. In the meantime, you can also find us with /who searches and tells, if we've got our tag up.
Echinacea
Mon Aug 02, 2004 2:04 pm
#8
Glum_Moonfist wrote:
Wish I could!
I've got my Swords/Doc on one account for PvE & PvP, and I have another account with my armorsmith. Hopefully you are right and players will fill the void since it sounds like Entertainers will be able to make a living off of their profession now. I just know at night currently, I see very few players in the cantina and finding a live entertainer available with both music and dance buffs is a challenge.
Err...sorry. Just like you're not interested in changing your Swordsman/Doctor or Armorsmith characters...there's a surprising number of people I've met who only have one of the performing elite professions and aren't interested in being a pure entertainer at the expense of their ability to PvE with a combat profession. So I think your chances of finding a pure performer, Master Musician/Dancer will be even smaller after the ability to call a macro within a macro is gone. I, myself, am a Musician/Swordsman/Brawler and gave up the ability to do partial dance buffs to take the Brawler mastery. (I'm still gimped in PvP, but not as much as if I still had Dancer 4/0/4/0.)
I hope the changes will squelch enough of the grinders and buffbots that those of us who enjoy performing, but don't enjoy the current atmosphere surrounding public performing, will be comfortable being searchable Masters again.
picklesSW
Mon Aug 02, 2004 2:14 pm
#9
I don't hear people complaining about finding a doctor to buff them, and yet there are no real doctor buffbots, and you cannot buy a "recording" of a doctor to take with you. Doctor buffs are as critical or more so than entertainer buffs. Why don't people cry to holy heaven about the inability to get doctor buffs easily?
Padtai
Tue Aug 03, 2004 10:21 am
#10
Javier, actually theydo cry about doctor buffs, and as a doctor, I feel bad when they cry to ME but I still don't want to buff them when I have other things I want to do. I try to tell people they don't need to be buffed all the time, but the fact is there are reasons they want to be and good ones. You make so much more experience or money being buffed than when not. If buffs were much weaker, perhaps the advantage to having them would not be so large, but right now it seems when I say you can take it or leave it, most people take itgrudingly Now on mindbuffs the advantage for most PVE is not that large but there are the high end bunkers and PVPers who feel fairly strongly they need not just want mind buffs.
Compare buffs to taxi's in a city with no subway or bus system, which does not allow personal vehicles. People can always walk, but that gets to be inconvenient, especially when you know taxi's exist If there are tons of cab drivers, then the cab fares would be held in check by competition. If there are few drivers, the prices could at times be far beyond the means of most people or even if they could afford it, they might not be able to even flag one down. So they walk but they are not happy they are walking. You are telling people to walk if they can't find you. Bots were like telling entertainers (or doctors) that people can ride horses through town. They caused other problems besides how they interfered with the supply and demandsuch as ruining the atmosphere, generating traffic (lag) and they smelled funny. So we get rid of bots, but we're back to telling people to walk. What would be so wrong about putting something like a subway into our fictional city? Creating some way to let people have some alternative between no buff and full entertainer buffs? I know the buffs were meant to give each of our professions something to make us important to the other classes but in the current game system, far too many people feel that they could not survive without buffs. Maybe we think its no great distance to ask them to walk, but they feel it is too far. The combat balance is going to be a long time away because of the number of changes that interact with each other. It may not even be possible to balance things in a way that buffs would be valuable yet not necessary. So why not think about some way to allow entertainers or doctors to increase the supply without necessarily taking their control over the supply away? Ultimately, as long as getting a live player to help you is better, that encourages the social interaction goal of the game. Subways have not eliminated the need for taxi's, they just turned them into a luxury.
Analogies are fine of course, but they aren't specific solutions. I proposed allowing merchant/entertainers to sell services on a vendor, the "recordings" idea is another way to do the same thing. I would not want to force entertainers to be "crafters" (for my own class we already are crafters) by making it so you cannot provide the types of buffs you currently do or not giving these a big advantage over whatever the new system is.
You may be right that there will be so many entertainers wanting to buff that no one feels they need some other method to get accomplishedthe things they want. Many players do not feelthere are enough doctors as it is and many doctors are tired of being asked to become virtual buffbots all the time (doing nothing but buff). You could be wrong however, and that is why maybe it is worth thinking about what else could be done. I know I feel pretty strongly that AFK is not the way to let people accomplish what they want but I'm not opposed to seeing other ideas.
picklesSW
Tue Aug 03, 2004 10:35 am
#11
I guess my point was that we're not that different from doctors, in terms of our availability. When this change goes in, assuming it kills buffbots, you may not find us everywhere, but chances are there'll be 24x7 support in places like Coronet and Theed, just like those doctors that sit in the starport. Like doctors, you may get lucky to find an entertainer buffing in an outpost on an advanced world, but if not, you either deal or take the starship back to civilization.
Bottom line, where is the justification for the complaining going on now that people might not find a buffbot on every corner? They say it will cripple them, but don't they already deal with this situation with doctors?
I fail to understand it.
Bottom line, where is the justification for the complaining going on now that people might not find a buffbot on every corner? They say it will cripple them, but don't they already deal with this situation with doctors?
I fail to understand it.
Arratarr
Tue Aug 03, 2004 2:20 pm
#12
I have to agree. People are complaining and whining because they can't be buffed 24/7. I seriously doubt its something that is intended for continual use. They "need" it? Its true that buffs give people less to think about when fighting, but really, if you keep your mind on things and use your head, you can do some pretty good stuff without major buffs all the time.
Sure you're not going to be soloing a krayt... But they upped the difficulty on the Corvette because people were soloing that... Do you think Sony is trying to TELL you something? Work together as a team instead of trying to be UBER leet Solo guy.
And if you can find buffs, great. if you can't, then you can't. People have gotten too used to having them all the time that now everyone is complaining about not being able to have them.
Sure you're not going to be soloing a krayt... But they upped the difficulty on the Corvette because people were soloing that... Do you think Sony is trying to TELL you something? Work together as a team instead of trying to be UBER leet Solo guy.
And if you can find buffs, great. if you can't, then you can't. People have gotten too used to having them all the time that now everyone is complaining about not being able to have them.
codezor
Tue Aug 03, 2004 2:52 pm
#13
ok for 1 it takes atleast 10 minutes to get a full mind buff, who the hell in there right mind is going to sit at the computer and wait for everyone to get buffs.
let me ge this strait you want us to try to play without the mind buffs? becuase the masters are too good at what they do?, or you want us to pick up another profesion when we have hard enough time keeping the profs that we have... becuase of the lack of skill points
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