Musician Archive
Thread: Jedi Grinder observations of Musician
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ImperialCmdr
Wed May 19, 2004 4:38 pm
#1
Now I know half of you will hate me from the start, yes Im only doing musician for the jedi grind, yes i'll give it up as soon as I get Master, but I just find the state of the profession so depressing.
Im in Dantooine Mining Outpost, trying to get my last 2 entertainer healing boxes. Do get quite a few people come in with mind wounds BF, do they listen to me, the guy trying to chat and have banter with everyone who comes in, or the AFK musician who is a woman in skimpy outfit. Well by my distress I think you can guess which. And of course as the AFK musician is already grouped I cant group with her to get ent healing xp also.
I remember a time when you went in a cantina and had a chat with the entertainers, I try to talk to people coming in and you get nothing. They just expect to sit down, listen to an AFK entertainer till they are done then go.
Is it always this depressing or has my week as a musician been untypical?
WhiteHindu
Wed May 19, 2004 4:42 pm
#2
Pay a CM and have them do mind disease on someone, then the person watches you and gives you all the XP. You could grind it out faster.
MMKia
Wed May 19, 2004 5:03 pm
#3
The grind is always depressing, but there are ppl who like to talk while being healed. Hopefully your grind will be over soon and you can move onto something else.
OrionsByte
Wed May 19, 2004 8:00 pm
#4
ImperialCmdr wrote:
Now I know half of you will hate me from the start, yes Im only doing musician for the jedi grind, yes i'll give it up as soon as I get Master, but I just find the state of the profession so depressing.
Im in Dantooine Mining Outpost, trying to get my last 2 entertainer healing boxes. Do get quite a few people come in with mind wounds BF, do they listen to me, the guy trying to chat and have banter with everyone who comes in, or the AFK musician who is a woman in skimpy outfit. Well by my distress I think you can guess which. And of course as the AFK musician is already grouped I cant group with her to get ent healing xp also.
I remember a time when you went in a cantina and had a chat with the entertainers, I try to talk to people coming in and you get nothing. They just expect to sit down, listen to an AFK entertainer till they are done then go.
Is it always this depressing or has my week as a musician been untypical?
Well yes, basically it's always this depressing. Unless you became a musician to have fun and don't care all too much for getting XP.
But what you're describing is exactly what everyone on this forum is talking about when they say that hologrinding has drastically affected the entertainment professions. In the first few months after launch, you could walk in to nearly any cantina and have a good chance of finding at least one entertainer there, and likely a few other people there for no other reason but to chat and be entertained.
However, now the cantinas are largly abandoned, save the two or three watering-holes-turned-grinding-holes like Theed, Coronet, and occasionally Anchorhead. But the really sad thing is that the perception of an entertainer has been so sullied that none of us are taken seriously anymore. To a disturbing majority of players, the definition of an entertainer would go something like, "One who plays music or dances while they are away from the keyboard, so that combat characters can be healed of mind wounds and battle fatigue; a holo-grinder." Once upon a time this definition would have been much different and much more flattering.
The thing is though, too much of the player base has shifted their focus to hologrinding, so the new "purpose" of entertaining is to 1) Get entertainment XP so as to fulfill a holocron requirement and 2) Heal the players grinding combat professions. It's sick.
I have nothing against people who want their Jedi slot and are willing to grind to get it, but nobody seems to care that it's ruining the game. Once you become a Jedi, then what? You wait for everyone else to stop hologrinding so that there's actually someone to fight?
Fortunately SOE has realized that the whole thing has gotten out of control. For what it's worth, I think that their original plan for gaining the force sensitive slot was sound, but what ruined it was letting the secret out. Hopefully Publish 10 will restore balance to the Force and normalcy to the game; but I fear the damage has been done already.
Vicotnik
Thu May 20, 2004 5:48 pm
#5
OrionsByte wrote:
Fortunately SOE has realized that the whole thing has gotten out of control. For what it's worth, I think that their original plan for gaining the force sensitive slot was sound, but what ruined it was letting the secret out. Hopefully Publish 10 will restore balance to the Force and normalcy to the game; but I fear the damage has been done already.
Yep, the damage has already been done. I mastered Musician in Tyrena the three or fourmonths after SWG was released, it took quite some time but it was fun. There was always a few at the keyboard entertainers there, and the patrons were talkative. Those days are gone now and most of those entertainers have dropped their entertainer skills since their professions have been ruined. 
Unless SOE decides to do something about afk-macros, I fear that the entertainer professions will never return to what they once were. Sure, with publish 10 we'll see alot less grinders, but the problem will remain as long as people are able to make and use unattendedbuff bots and the like.
JohnMarble
Fri May 21, 2004 5:38 am
#6
Buff bots are the plague! Hologrinders can be okay guys, they'll even be at the keyboard, I love a lot of those dudes! Jedi revamp=more buffbots.Buffbots never socialize (they hate groups), they're never at the keyboard, they're just in it for the credits.One day I'll I'll look back at this as the good ol' days (since I missed the golden age). Thanks for the "fix" devs.
Vicotnik
Fri May 21, 2004 6:53 am
#7
Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against the hologrinders personally, they are just doing what they need to get what they want. Even though hologrinding utterly ruined much of the entertainer professions, I can't blame them.
Buffbots are a whole different issue though, ascreating one of those is a conscious choice...
I'm not even sure that most of the people behind the buffbots are in it just for the credits. This might vary from server to server, but I see alot of musician and dancer buffbots buffing for free.
Sometimes I think that entertainers would have been better off without the buffs. 
kirah_ashlin
Fri May 21, 2004 2:00 pm
#8
Itmay very welltakesignificantly changing oraltogether removing the buffingabilities from ents for the profession to recover from the AFK and buffbot malise.
Vicotnik wrote:
[snip]
Sometimes I think that entertainers would have been better off without the buffs.
MMKia
Sat May 22, 2004 7:58 pm
#9
JohnMarble wrote:
Buff bots are the plague! Hologrinders can be okay guys, they'll even be at the keyboard, I love a lot of those dudes! Jedi revamp=more buffbots. Buffbots never socialize (they hate groups), they're never at the keyboard, they're just in it for the credits. One day I'll I'll look back at this as the good ol' days (since I missed the golden age). Thanks for the "fix" devs.
I personally buff for money to support my Jedi. I have +25 in musical mind enhancement, and usually buff alone. I do this because i use the 3 min flourish buff to speed ppl on their way. I'm always at the KB talking to the ppl that i buff. I dont join groups, because it messes up the ents who are actually trying to sound good instead of hearing my nala flourish spam.
NOW the AFK buff bots who have the auro join command who sit in a house or a cantina with the doc buff bot i cant stand. My cantina has a no AFK policy for entertainers. Basically, if youre AFK for more than a half hour you're kicked from the cantina for a week. Repeat offenders are banned forever. A few doc/musician alts wanted to set up a buff bot in my cantina, but i told them no.
They wont be able to fix ppl who want to waste their time (and money) just to sit AFK buffing. but i hope that the end of hologrinding will lead to me being able to play in the city cantinas again without hating minute of it.
Vicotnik
Sat May 22, 2004 8:38 pm
#10
MMKia wrote:
They wont be able to fix ppl who want to waste their time (and money) just to sit AFK buffing. but i hope that the end of hologrinding will lead to me being able to play in the city cantinas again without hating minute of it.
Actually, I think thatthey could quite easily fix it by taking a stand against un-attended gameplay. Though, that will never happened since they have added something in the FAQ about afk-grinding being ok. They might aswell have written: "You gain entertainer skills by not being at your keyboard for long periods of time" or something...
I also hope that the end of hologrinding will make city cantinas hospitable again. I'm very sceptical that it will ever return to the way it was though.
JohnMarble
Sun May 23, 2004 5:02 am
#11
Imagine asking the devs, back when the game was still in develoment,if they would add NPC doctors and entertainers so we don't have to rely on people. The answer would be no, they would be against NPCs selling services like this, or evengoods. So the players stepped in, and became the NPCs instead. I wonder how serious they feel now about fixing the problem, because those alternate accounts generate money.
What's so awful is that I have to stand next to these stinkingbuffbots, guys giving away the service because they're making money off their lots anyway. I never really felt that entertainers should get droids like a doc so they could buff anywhere, but now I feel we should. I'd just like to be able to get out of the cantina with the buffbots, at this point.
Kiavvie, I'll join groups and just wield a bandfill, the thing 3min doesn't make them sound bad with that. They tend to like it for the experience bonus having me in their group, as well as not losing out on healing exp when I buff somebody who just walks in.
Warplex
Sun May 23, 2004 6:10 am
#12
1) Jedi hologrinders are the main reason we have to deal with AFK entertainers
2) Buffbots are the scourge of the universe. If we have an afker who is autojoining (and yes, i know about 5 in the theed cantina on bria alone), what chance do we have of making a living? never mind that the spam they make is mind-grindingly annoying!
Vicotnik
Sun May 23, 2004 7:41 am
#13
The spam I can actually live with, but then again, I have a no tollerance against spam. /addignore is my friend! 
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