Musician Archive
Thread: AFK Entertainers are good, really
Now: Can find entertainers on most adventure planets and a big groups in major cities such as Coronet and Bestine.
See, I'm hologrinding musician now (and quite enjoying it I must add, spend way too much time late at night doing nothing but talking and listening and playing), but that doesn't change my opinion that without the afkers, there was a huge lack of entertainers overall. This is a good thing for people who do not want to spend 10k to leave their adventure planet of choice, go to a major city, heal for 5 minutes and then hop back, possibly having spent as much as 30-40 minutes for a few minutes of healing.
So as a former adventurer (and future I hope): THANK YOU AFK ENTERTAINERS!
Also as for tipping amounts, how much do you think it should be worth? It doesn't cost anything to heal fatigue, as opposed to for example doctors, who has some (small) costs involved.
Frankly, 500 cr is a good tip for "normal" bf and in general what I tip. In either case, that is not the issue here. Entertainer income, or lack thereof, is a separate issue. Medics and doctors have the same problem. How often do we get "heal me" and when I say "sure, 500 cr please" they send a more or less explicit reply explaining what an idiot I am and how I must heal them to get xp (never mind that I'm already a master doctor). Again though, not the same issue as afk entertainers.
My main point is that from a non-entertainer point of view, AFK entertainers are good.
And as pointed out in this thread, if you're looking for tips, stay out of the coronet cantina and other busy places. There's simply too many people to tip IF I want to tip and too few customers to the number of entertainers. Go to the outposts and you'll get more tips.
Mejowepra wrote:
Before holocrons: Man, have to travel to Coronet to find an entertainer, if I'm lucky.
Now: Can find entertainers on most adventure planets and a big groups in major cities such as Coronet and Bestine.
See, I'm hologrinding musician now (and quite enjoying it I must add, spend way too much time late at night doing nothing but talking and listening and playing), but that doesn't change my opinion that without the afkers, there was a huge lack of entertainers overall. This is a good thing for people who do not want to spend 10k to leave their adventure planet of choice, go to a major city, heal for 5 minutes and then hop back, possibly having spent as much as 30-40 minutes for a few minutes of healing.
So as a former adventurer (and future I hope): THANK YOU AFK ENTERTAINERS!
You know, maybe if people actually tipped part of that 10k to the entertainers that go there instead of timming 100-500 or not at all, more real entertainers could go there. It is AFK entertainers and people who were rude to entertainers that caused the problem in the first place.
And why do there have to be entertainers in every cantina? That is hurting the profession too. Entertainers aren't meant to be so spread out. Theres entertainers in every cantina, every PA hall, even some random houses out in the middle of nowhere. That hurts the profession.
Mejowepra wrote:
My main point is that from a non-entertainer point of view, AFK entertainers are good.
And I think the point others are trying to make is that AFK entertainers have all but destroyed three entire professions. During beta, the developers used to release skill trees of various professions so that players who weren't in beta could get a peek at what was coming. When the entertainer tree was released, many players asked, "Why would anyone want to play this profession?" The developers (mainly Holocron and Q-3PO) replied by saying that entertainers were designed to appeal to the segment of players who fell under the "Socializer" segment of the Bartle test.
Battle fatigue and mind wounds were, as pretty much everyone knows, initially designed to place players in cantinas for entertainers to interact with. As more and more people began to run unattended macros, whether for holocron grinding or simply out of an inability to resist temptation, cantinas became more and more desolate places. No one can interact with a robot. In essence the entire situation was like chopping down a forest; as the environment dies, so do the species that inhabit it. As more afkers moved in, the social environment was chopped away and more atk entertainers moved out.
The professions designed to be the most social of all, the only professions that really were unique to SWG, have now become the least social professions in the game. To be an "average" entertainer now requires nothing more than the desire to get something for nothing and feel no ethical dilemma about copying a few lines of text from a webpage into a macro box. It no longer requires any timing, any speech, or any ability to entertain or interact whatsoever. If this is "progress," I'd rather remain old-fashioned and outnumbered. Like many of my peers, however, I'll likely just end up being gone. All hail progress.
actually afk ents are A-holes cause as the ppl before me said... they have ruined the entire profession... but i am doing something about it in this thread...
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Ahazi&message.id=127214
In either case, there are plenty of opportunities to socialize if you venture out in the world as opposed to sticking to the major cantinas. Also, believe it or not, I have done plenty of socializing even in places such as Coronet with 25-30 entertainers, despite not being a socializer and despite really having better things to do.
If _anyone_ has destroyed the entertainer profession, it's SOE, not the AFK entertainers. Most of us would rather not have STARTED doing entertainer at all but are FORCED to do so to archieve a higher goal in the game. Never mind that I'm actually enjoying it most of the time (when I'm not afk of course).
Also, learn to take advantage of the relatively rareness of dedicated entertainers - take on jobs (i.e sell your services) in more remote areas (player cities primarily), or join a hunting group - do you even know how hard to impossible it is to find entertainers willing to go into the field? Even with doctors it's hard to find ones that don't want to sit in the outpost or by a starport selling buffs (one reason I became a doctor, by choice, was lack of adventure hungry doctors).
Instead of sitting in a single place all day long, go out and adventure and experience the game as it should be experienced!
And before you say "yeah, but I can't heal BF in the field" - so what? Half the fun is the RP value of sitting in camp and chatting at the fire. The other half is healing mind wounds (and then BF at starport stops inbetween).
Another idea is to put together an entertainer group, which do professional (compared to your typical xp group in cantinas) shows for a predefined set of money. I keep hearing how entertainers are so poor and no one tims (mostly true), and yet I see NO POSTS offering the services of an entertainer group! What's up with that? Heck, even I, a holo-musician, would find that to be a very thing thing to do.
So stop whining and start playing the game!
How about people who want to get both xp AND a social atmosphere? Those are the people bugged the most. The pure roleplayers aren't often in the cantinas anyway.
And there are lots of entertainer groups that do hired performances. I've personally done weddings, fashion shows, private dinners, grand balls (Do you have any idea how much dance xp you get for dancing for 50 or more people? Try enough to get 1/3 of dance tech3in the span of 2 hours, and I wasn't even leading the dancing - hence getting the xp - the whole time.) and everything in between. Nor am I poor. I live pretty well off pure entertainer money. You just can't go out and do missions to rake in the money as an entertainer. You actually have to entertain people, and make a name for yourself. You're right, it isn't easy. Even people who have not been AFK and are master dancers have turned away from us because they couldn't do it.
But doing gigs doesn't get you healing xp. (Well it usually gets a little, but not much.) And without healing xp, you can't reach master. So in the end, all that time spent out roleplaying and having a good time is a mere baby step towards master, and you're left with either spending years to get master, or going to grind.
Why don't you just post how? It will let the grinders get through the profession and be on their way faster.
My entertainer healing exp isn't capped yet so I can see the numbers go by. I don't keep exact track of it, but I get *tons* of healing exp when my guild is gathering to do a raid. If you're stuck on just your healing exp, see if you can get a gig buffing a rebel or imperial guild raid-even a 75% buff will be of assistance. In my experience, musicians are rarer to find too. (At least it appears so on my server)
Nhari, I couldn't have worded your post any better than that.. right on!
I still play my master entertainer/master musician. Not for exp, not for holos, but for fun! Sadly the fun is quickly being zapped out of it. I logged in, and went to the local cantina... it was PACKED. No doubt 80% of the performers in there were holo grinders. So what happened? I plop my Nalargon down, ask if I can get into an Entertainer group.. and lo and behold they're all FULL! Eventually a spot opens up and I'm invited. Now, I'm a pretty active entertainer.. yes I macro a few key songs or sections of songs together so I can type without looping the same default chord over and over, but I was getting no response from anyone in the cantina at all... I felt sooo alone. 60% were (afk) and the other 40%either didn't care to actually entertain or were asking other people how to set up a looping macro.
Maybe I'll retire my musician till this holo thing blows over, or move to a desolate place where entertainers are badly needed.
In either case, we all grind one way or another. Yesterday I finished of my last box, getting about 123k entertainer healing xp in 4-5 hours. I had one more band mate (dancer) and two in the audience (and no combat medics). Now try to figure out how I did it. Oh, no uncloned dying was involved either.