Musician Archive

The first character I ever played more than an hour was an entertainer by the name of Tokaf on the Bloodfin server. I played (at the keyboard) for 2 or 3 months (I don't really remember how long anymore) until I finally reached master musician. At the time, we didn't have buffs or anything else for that matter that had been added to us since launch. After a while, I slowly stopped playing that character and switched to another, and stopped playing altogether in January, having tried buffing someone with my musician character maybe once. I recently resubscribed, thinking that maybe something had changed with the class, and sadly, I was completely wrong. The situation with AFK macroing, AFK holo-grinding, and buff-botting is well known by all true entertainers (those who actually entertain other players), but I am not one to simply ignore the situation. Today for instance, I logged on in the morning to find an AFK buff-bot in the Coronet cantina (which is sadly the one of the few cantinas worth going to if one wants to see more than a customer or two ever half hour). Through out the day, I /shouted asking people to ignore and not heal the buff-botter. I was surprised that it worked for the most part. Near the end of my play session, a guild-mate of the buff-botter was setting himself up to play next to his friend. I decided to /tell him and ask his friend to stop buff-botting. What a mistake I made. First, I asked the second guy if he was AFK thinking he might already be, and got the response: not yet, but I will soon. Feeling rather outraged, I asked him how he and his friend could AFK macro, knowing that it is hurting the profession. I got one response and one response over and over as I tried to reason with him: "Well, the game allows me to so I do it. Buff bots are everywhere in this game, just accept." Maybe the funniest (or worst) remark was from the buff-botter himself who said that I should go play Asheron's Call. The buff-botter, who was surprisingly at his computer for once, told me that he had been an entertainer since the first week (implying that he should be able to buff-bot if he wanted to). When I told him that people like him who play the profession as a secondary one buff-bot they hurt those of us who play it as a primary one, he gave a rather frightening response. He said that it WAS his primary profession, and when I asked him how he could call it that when he was AFK non-stop playing it, he never responded. Even a guild-mate of his (a different one) who /telled me asking why I was "harrassing" the buff-botter agreed with me.

What is my point in this whole rant? It seems everyone on this board can't wait for publish 9 and how it will take us back to the "good old days" where entertainers were ATK and people tipped. I for one don't remember any time like this, only a time where the problems we face now were less severe. I'm thinking that this patch will have bad consequences for us. Why? Well right now, people are used to AFK entertainers and not having to tip. When the holo-grind ends, the cantinas will be empty, literally. Why? The holo-grinders will be gone, as will those people who mastered musician or dancer at one point and gave up because of the holo-grinders. This will incite more buff-botting and hate towards entertainers who will be at the keyboard and expecting some kind of tip. The fact is, every other profession would not care if we live entertainers vanished leaving only buff-botters. Hell, they might even want NPC entertainers.

Worst of all, SOE doesn't understand our plight. The Musician and Dancer professions are not broken (well no more than any other really), the problem with us is our lack of definition and the ability to AFK-macro and buff. No matter how many new missions and theme parks are added for us, this problem will never go away. It may never go away anyway. Most of the player base is non-entertainer, and any change that would force them to interact with us (oh no) would not be favorable. Let's face it, combat professions want to kill kill kill 24/7. They don't want to talk to us. They'd much rather get a second character or use a guild mates buff bot to heal. Maybe the whole idea of the "entertainer" is flawed, but if it is, it is not because it forces players to interact, but because players don't see why they should have to in a massively MULTIPLAYER online role-playing game.

Oh I guess I won't drop the profession, I'm merely ranting.

It's not so much that, but the attitude of these AFKers and SOE's inability to solve the problem after almost a year.

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XeroAnarian wrote:

Then the AFK'ers came...

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I seem to remember AFKs from almost day one. Entertainers begged for tips from day one (I actually did at first before learning better).

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XeroAnarian wrote:

I remember when everyone tipped, no matter how cheap it was.

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When was that? I was also stiffed by people from day one. Yes, more people tipped then, but of course they usually tipped the underwear dancer and not the musician. Not that whether I get tips is the primary problem when it is not.

The problem is that AFKs portray us badly and make it seem like we all are simply making money off of someone who needs a buff or needs a heal without doing any work. ATK entertainers DO work, but it is the reputation we get from AFKs that hurts us the most.

Why can't what was done to surveying be done to us? Maybe an occasional pop-up asks you to flourish in a specific way to please a random NPC, and if you do it, the NPC heals you or something. But, if you don't do anything, you don't gain XP, but you still use up action. As for buffs, when you do /setperform, a window should pop-up asking you to flourish in a random order. It speeds up the buff and gets rid of buffbots. The macro can stay in, but it wouldn't work for entertaining.

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Tokaf wrote:
I seem to remember AFKs from almost day one. Entertainers begged for tips from day one (I actually did at first before learning better).

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Really? Not me. Entertainers definately did beg for tips, but I didn't see AFK'ers for a while. Different servers, different people, you know? I started on Starsider, and originally played only in Moenia. First time I saw an AFK'er was either in Coronet or Tyrena Cantina.

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Tokaf wrote:
When was that? I was also stiffed by people from day one. Yes, more people tipped then, but of course they usually tipped the underwear dancer and not the musician. Not that whether I get tips is the primary problem when it is not.

The problem is that AFKs portray us badly and make it seem like we all are simply making money off of someone who needs a buff or needs a heal without doing any work. ATK entertainers DO work, but it is the reputation we get from AFKs that hurts us the most.

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Maybe I should say that I remember AFKs from at least the first week? That might be more accurate.

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Tokaf wrote:
Why can't what was done to surveying be done to us? Maybe an occasional pop-up asks you to flourish in a specific way to please a random NPC, and if you do it, the NPC heals you or something.

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I personally wouldn't mind something like this, but I know some Musicians have qualms about it; they worry it will be annoying or worse. Also, people routinely circumvent the surveying/sampling limits by using third-party macros. (For all I know, people have figured out some way to circumvent it with the in-game macro.) Doubtless the survey system cuts down on some AFK'ing, but at the same time it obliges the devs and CSRs to police more rigorously the use of third-party macros. As far as I'm concerned, they should be policing for such macros, as most other MMORPGs do. But even if you don't use third-party macros to circumvent surveying, you can still do it quasi-AFK. You can alt-tab out of SWG and do something else; just listen for a stretch of silence, then alt-tab back in to click OK.