Musician Archive

So obviously the things listed in the Combat Upgrade document are a shock to us as entertainers. I've seen plenty of strong reactions to it here and on the other entertainer boards. It's perfectly reasonable that we become hurt, confused, and angry when what we've seen (and all we've seen) is that several parts of what currently makes up our professions are not going to be around after the Combat Upgrade goes live. We all care a lot about the professions we've been playing and put a lot of time and effort into, so if something is going to happen to it, of course we react. So that's good , we care.

I just don't want us to stop there. Throwing nalargons at the devs right now might feel good, but it won't do us as much good as focusing our (recently intensified) energy on figuring out "what can we do now?"

So here's what I plan to do.. after I submit this, I'm going to start up a thread that lists all our concerns specifically related to the Combat Upgrade. I want to make sure and track everything ya'll come up with so nothing is missed. Obviously behind the scenes we've been bringing these sorts of things up already in anticipation, but now that this CU info is public, I can gather it straight from ya'll.

The main overlying concern that I've seen expressed is our interdependence. If it's still meant to be healing/buffing, those roles seem to be reduced from what's been shown. If it's meant to be something else (or if it's meant to not exist), then we've yet to see what that is. I think it's generally true that we want some kind of interdependence, or the professions will feel empty, and I've been presenting that view to the devs and will continue to do so. In any case, if the answer to this question (or any of our other concerns) becomes known, I'll bring it here as soon as I can.

Anyways, I'm not trying to play PR cop for SOE or anything like that. If you're angry, by all means be angry - like I said, it shows you care . On the other hand, the strongest thing that's kept me going in this game has been the friends I've met on here, and so I hate to see any one of ya'll upset. So the sooner you work off the anger by smacking people around with your instrument of choice, the sooner I'll be relieved that I won't have to worry about picking up pieces of you when you explode . Let's focus as much on "What can we do now?" as possible, and hope things turn out for the best.

Incidentally, here is a post from Thunderheart in which he acknowledges that entertainer concerns need to be addressed. The pertinent text:

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Thunderheart wrote:

Greetings!

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend.

There are a lot of posts and a lot of concerns for sure. We'll answer what we can and while going through the rest of your comments, we'll be looking over some of the more complicated questions as a group early next week. Some of your concerns will require a few people to review them so we can get you the best possible answers.

snip

Aside from the need to get you folks more information (which we're working on), Here is a list of some of the concerns gathered so far:

• Item Conversion Details
• Modded clothing
• Buff Packs
• Potent Weapons
• Ranger, Creature Handler and Entertainer outlook
• Details on skill point allocation and the process
• Details about how player health progresses

Please keep the questions coming!

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OrionsByte wrote:

Honestly, after my initial read I wasn't all that worried. I really didn't see anything, save the removal of mind wounds, that was going to change for entertainers. The document they posted yesterday made references to a few different types of buffs, and even specifically said that there would be some "long lasting, minor buffs."

Yet here, and in the other entertainer forums, people are in a panic because "the entertainers are being removed from the game" or "we're being nerfed until 2007" or whatever. Unless I'm blind, I really don't see anything in those documents that would make me have that kind of reaction. I've been a musician since I bought the game, and when it came time in my character's life to make a choice between fencing and musician, I hung up my sword. I have as much of an investment and a passion about this profession as anyone else here, and yet I don't seem to be gripped by the same panic that eveyrone else is.

Am I missing something? Is there some line of text somewhere that says, "Entertainer professions will no longer be useful after the CU," that I'm just not seeing? Or am I simply not skilled enough in the art of skipping lines and reading between them?

I started by saying that I wasn't initially worried. I'm starting to get worried now, but not because of what the devs said, but because of what everyone else is saying. The problem with that is that what everyone else is saying is based on conjecture as far as I can tell, and little else, and that pisses me off because I hate basing my opinions on conjecture, and yet here I am, starting to do it.

Aleyo, do we have a reason to be concerned? You may not be able to answer that, and I understand. I'm just frustrated because I'm trying to reserve judgement while the rest of humanity is rushing to it, and I just want to know if I'm being foolish by trying to be optimistic.

/sigh

Somebody shoot me. Pre-CU please, 'cause I want to make sure it's my mind that takes the damage.

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I think that it is mostly a matter of reading between the lines, coupled to our previous experiences with the Devs. And this previous experience says that they do not understand or care about the entertainer professions and therefore cannot be trusted to make (or even try to make) any design decisions that will give us the feeling that we are useful and a viable profession within the greater context of the game.

Or, to put it differently: the Devs have screwed up so many times in regards to entertainers, we expect them to screw up again

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OrionsByte wrote:

Am I missing something? Is there some line of text somewhere that says, "Entertainer professions will no longer be useful after the CU," that I'm just not seeing? Or am I simply not skilled enough in the art of skipping lines and reading between them?

My concern for Entertainers becoming useless is not directly related to healing and buffs. My concern comes from What was initially stated regarding health stats.

Health, Action, Mind pools

• A character's maximum health will increase with the character's combat level up to 300%. New character health will be 1000, maxed character health will be 3000.
• Players will be able to reference their combat level.
• Short term buffs will modify this health value no more than 20%.
• Long term buffs will modify this health value no more than 10%.
• Species modifiers will affect no more than 10% of a base statistic.

This statement clearly defines that Combat professions are going to be more important to the game. All professions will get skills with their higher boxes, but only the combat professionals will get the additional 200% bonus to their health. Even if as a musician, I took a combat prof as my second profession, then I'd still only have 2/3 the health of a combat double master. With mobs being adjusted to be more of a group activity rather than solo, then I'll have even more problems riding out to gigs, or just flying home.

If people get a benefit of 200% bonus on health for masteries in combat, they should get it for all masteries.

Healing or no, buffs or no, that one change makes all non-combat profs, including entertainers, second and third class citizens.

Yes the current system is unbalanced and buffs are way too high, but I can get the same buffs as anyone. Others can deal more damage, but I can play better music...its somewhat balanced. In the new system, others can do more damage and have 3000 health. All I get is music and needing others to babysit me.


Fragpuppie Uber
Master of Something Soon to be Suicidal to be

in terms of entertainer in the cu, im not quite as worried, ever since mid 04, i havent been playing musican to make money, or to heal people, or to buff people, because well, i had no market, between buffbots and afkbots, i had little chance to make money from healing or buffing, so i just said fsck it.

instead, ive been playing musician because i enjoy the music, i enjoy playing with a group of other, live entertainers, because well, its fun... that is why i play entertainer:

not because it makes me money, not because it gets me rich & famous

because i enjoy it, and well, as long as it continues to be enjoyable, i will play an entertainer

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dimmu-borgir wrote:
in terms of entertainer in the cu, im not quite as worried, ever since mid 04, i havent been playing musican to make money, or to heal people, or to buff people, because well, i had no market, between buffbots and afkbots, i had little chance to make money from healing or buffing, so i just said fsck it.

instead, ive been playing musician because i enjoy the music, i enjoy playing with a group of other, live entertainers, because well, its fun... that is why i play entertainer:

not because it makes me money, not because it gets me rich & famous

because i enjoy it, and well, as long as it continues to be enjoyable, i will play an entertainer

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Well and good but you have to cover costs somehow. Since I can just barely keep master ent, master musician, and master TK it means I will have less health than a double combat master. Since mid to high level creatures are supposed to be a group effort it means I can't take very decent missions. So any template that is not 100 percent combat will be at a distinct disadvantage to carrying out missions or other non-crafting sources of income. It will end up with the combatants, weapons smiths, and armorsmiths being the only people who have a reliable source of income. What about the rest of us?

SOE has gone from balancing the combat classes to turning this into a team FPS. What the heck are those guys smoking?

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LyteFoot wrote:

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dimmu-borgir wrote:
in terms of entertainer in the cu, im not quite as worried, ever since mid 04, i havent been playing musican to make money, or to heal people, or to buff people, because well, i had no market, between buffbots and afkbots, i had little chance to make money from healing or buffing, so i just said fsck it.

instead, ive been playing musician because i enjoy the music, i enjoy playing with a group of other, live entertainers, because well, its fun... that is why i play entertainer:

not because it makes me money, not because it gets me rich & famous

because i enjoy it, and well, as long as it continues to be enjoyable, i will play an entertainer

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Well and good but you have to cover costs somehow. Since I can just barely keep master ent, master musician, and master TK it means I will have less health than a double combat master. Since mid to high level creatures are supposed to be a group effort it means I can't take very decent missions. So any template that is not 100 percent combat will be at a distinct disadvantage to carrying out missions or other non-crafting sources of income. It will end up with the combatants, weapons smiths, and armorsmiths being the only people who have a reliable source of income. What about the rest of us?

SOE has gone from balancing the combat classes to turning this into a team FPS. What the heck are those guys smoking?

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FWIW, I think I'm in the same boat as dimmu, which is probably why I'm not as freaked out as everyone else. I don't see anything that's going to make me enjoy being a musician any less. Music has never been a primary source of income for me.

As far as us not getting the health bonus that the combat templates get... well we still start off with 1000 HAM, and I don't know about anyone else, but that's more than I've ever migrated my stats to. Back when I was a Master Droid Engineer/Master Artisan/Master Musician, and had no combat skills to protect me, I had around 600-700 HAM. Sure, things were dangerous when I went to check harvesters or simply tried driving to Theed and back, but that's as it should be for a character with no way to defend themselves. But that 600-700 HAM was plenty enough to protect me from even the toughest creatures as I drove by on my speederbike. Even if the creatures are made tougher, I think 1000 HAM should be plenty to make sure we survive. Even more so if you're paying attention and can steer around potential problems.

I dunno... I'm still trying to hold on to a shred of positive attitude, and frankly the forums are starting to wear me out. It's fine to be concerned, but until the thing hits beta and people actually get a chance to play it, we really have no idea what the impact will be. Frankly, if you all have that little faith in the developers, I'm not sure why you're still giving them your money. /shrug

I'm giving them my money because TODAY it is still a game I enjoy playing. I'll continue to give them my money if it remains that way after the CU. However it does not look promising. I understand music isn't your main source of income, it isn't mine either. My main source has been creature harvesting. Now I look at the skill point tree and there will be NO points for me to have any scout if I keep my current masters. All well and good so I give up master ent, well if they do with the creatures what we expect them to do I still won't be able to take on much over a humbaba alone. So now I have to either give up all ent to be effective or I have to find a way to make ent pay. The problem is that given what we know today its a pretty black and white looking scenario with no room for gray. Time will tell but honestly the dev team seems to have no vision and really only understands black and white. They also don't seem to be able to realize that there are lots of entertainers who have that as only one facet of their character.

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LyteFoot wrote:
I'm giving them my money because TODAY it is still a game I enjoy playing. I'll continue to give them my money if it remains that way after the CU. However it does not look promising. I understand music isn't your main source of income, it isn't mine either. My main source has been creature harvesting. Now I look at the skill point tree and there will be NO points for me to have any scout if I keep my current masters. All well and good so I give up master ent, well if they do with the creatures what we expect them to do I still won't be able to take on much over a humbaba alone. So now I have to either give up all ent to be effective or I have to find a way to make ent pay. The problem is that given what we know today its a pretty black and white looking scenario with no room for gray. Time will tell but honestly the dev team seems to have no vision and really only understands black and white. They also don't seem to be able to realize that there are lots of entertainers who have that as only one facet of their character.

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I think that statement may be more correct than you think. Looking at the ID change on TC, the change wasn't made to make ID cheaper in general. It was made to make ID specifically cheap enouh to master ALONG WITH Music and Dance. It seems as though they think that entertainers are ALL entertainer or then they canare notconsidered to be entertainer.

I for one have tried all the different types of classes and have mastered many. Currently I'm working on smuggler, but I have done combat, healing, scouting and crafting. I've even briefly tried commando (I miss my flamer).

In the new system, I will always be at a disadvantage if I keep my music (which I always have done).

A variable stat system makes it clear that a person can spend their time tuning their body to do what they want. One can exercise for muscle or brainpower, endurance or clearheadedness. Getting extra health for mastering a combat profession is STUPID. Its basically saying "here's your diploma and your permabuff". Also, if creatures are balanced to people wandering around ALWAYS with 3000 health (or 3600 with that 20% buff), how well am I going to fare with my silly 1000 (1200).

A digression....

Mastery of different things should give benefits to different stats. If anything, mastering entertainer professions should give as muchof a benefit as a combat profession. A pistoleer will have a very strong trigger finger, but dancers really get a workout. Med or crafting profs might get addons to mind. Each should have its own bonus!!!

Fragpuppie Uber
Master Entertainer, Master Musician
Founding Member - Frag's Puppies
President and CEO - Fragpuppie Enterprises and Uber Instruments
Coronet, Corellia, Chilastra