Musician Archive

I remember back in the day... when music and dance buffs didnt work... and well... in all honesty, in one day, i was lucky to make 5k, let alone anything. I am not willing to go back to that position.

Now that this topic have gathered some momentum it is time to return to it. No, I do not think that removing buffs is the end all be all solution to AFKing. Nevertheless, I think it is imported to be ready to consider ANY solution for however brief a moment.

I should properly have named the topic "introduction to a debate: Is mind buffs worth the buffbots" or something like that, but experience tells me that that kind of posts do not get many replies, and as thus do not get the concept debated.

One point that seamed to come up often is that buffs are our main source of income... Nevertheless, no matter what we deserver a reliable way to earn credits for maintains, travel and clothing using our profession. If not buffs then some other way.

The question really is, are the role of buffing something that is good for us as a profession, the way it is currently implemented. I would say no. I think Xyrdre expressed some of what I was trying to get at.

The role of the "healer" that patch the combatant up after the fight and the role of the "buffer" who readies the "combatant" for combat is not the same. Doctors was meant to have an active role in combat, with thair stim's. Hence, the stretch from buffer ,over damage healing, to mending wounds after wards, works well for them.
We entertainers on the other hand do not take part in combat, and the dual role does not work as well for us.

Now if I had free hands to redesign buffs I would make them more like holoemotes. So that it was something we gave to the combatants that they, them self, would activate when they needed it, except it should only have one charge. It would put buffing in the same category as BF healing, something you just have to get fixed sometimes between you last fight and you next one.
But unfortunately I am not on the dev team.

I do not thing the income we can get from buffs outweigh the sentiment of "if they are not buffing 24/7, then they are worthless", that buffbots have nurtured in many combatants. In the long run the existence of buffs, as they work currently, will be more harmful to us then the credit they earn us will do good. If you disagree then think of how the reaction will be when the buffbots finally goes away, we will be blamed by many for not being there 24/7 and thair beloved bots use to.

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Tarnak_Archvold wrote:


I do not thing the income we can get from buffs outweigh the sentiment of "if they are not buffing 24/7, then they are worthless", that buffbots have nurtured in many combatants. In the long run the existence of buffs, as they work currently, will be more harmful to us then the credit they earn us will do good. If you disagree then think of how the reaction will be when the buffbots finally goes away, we will be blamed by many for not being there 24/7 and thair beloved bots use to.

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Message Edited by Drygo on 10-28-2004 07:49 PM

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Beery wrote:

"There's a buffbot in the cantina in Coronet on my server. He's charging 10k for buffs and has people on him all the time. You know what I do? I take my alt in there, stand right next to him and offer the same buffs for 8k. Guess which one the people go to now?"

I have no problem with buffbots who charge the going rate. They perform their job and they don't undercut the market. This buffbot is giving live entertainers their chance to make a few credits by competing with him(assuming he can enforce the payment)and he's performing a service during times when there are no entertainers available. I don't see anything wrong with that (apart from the fact that he's not really playing the game - but that's his problem).

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There's no way he's enforcing the payment unless he's there, or running a 3rd party program to parse /savemail results for banktips then passing that data back to the game to do a /target (so-and-so) and /setperf.

That's the only way to enforce payment of credits for a musical buff while AFK. Otherwise, it's just "join and be buffed! Oh, and tip me 8k if you please". Yeah...right.

Anyway, I am against removing buffs.

They give us income. They give us a purpose to combat chars OTHER than a time-sink to heal their BF. Leave 'em in as they are.

An intresting aproach to the issue at hand.

One thought that comes to mind is that everyone wants the same thing which is more live ent's in cantinas. Yet there is a suggestion there should be missons for ents that would take them outside of cantinas... Am i the only one who see's a contradiction here?

Surley the quests should help perfomer stay inside the cantinas so that they are available to general populus for healing purposes.

Another thought that occurs to me is that trying to remove buffs is not tackling the route problems which are well documented lack of respect for our profession's from master ent up to master dancer/musicain. I feel our buffs command less respect because it costs our characters nothing to make and give the buff out. In a way i would almost say if we could use up resources to give out our buffs that this would then give a tangiable value to our product. People could then see our costs and our profit margin, it would also open up the market a bit adding varitey to ent buffs.

Another approach would be to have it so you have to eat a certain type of food or drink a drink to buff again giving a cost to the buff.

As for tackling the issue of making entaining more fun? How the hell do you do that You either enjoy performing infront of people or you don't IMO. Yes there are some thing some could do to help us like fixing the dancers dances and making it so that bands in cantina don't sound like someone sawing off there own hands. As a muscian i have to say its dishearting when you can't use a band leader to lead flourishing in cantinas It often just sounds wrong to the punters who i am sure have turned down the music....

Quests as most people prepose to me sound way to solo for my likeing... Unless its like get into a ent group and give a performance to x people or heal X bf and wounds then get a payout. Maybe have the misson term in the cantina cause i am to lazy to walk outside Again i see hugh abuse potenial of a system like this due to the amount of healing that happens in coronet, i was passing by there and i trained one bloke in 4/5 boxes of fatigue and wound healing I like the idea of missons scaled on your muscian or dancing talents diffculty. Maybe one approach could be to make it so that the band leader gets the missons and then everyone gets a pay out.

I am not sure about this idea of requesting flourishes from players, imo floruishes so need to removed from the game. If they weren't there no need for the crappy macro to be going off in the background. I would rather talk to my punters i just find flourishes an annoyance.

Bah sorry for my ramble

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Rotain wrote:
One thought that comes to mind is that everyone wants the same thing which is more live ent's in cantinas. Yet there is a suggestion there should be missons for ents that would take them outside of cantinas... Am i the only one who see's a contradiction here?

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A proper income from entertainer mission terminals is not a contradiction to keeping the numbers of live entertainers in the public cantinas up. If gig missions actuarially became interesting and challenging, it would provide us with another thing to do besides being chained in the cantinas. A broader array of activities would in turn make more people interested in the profession.
But even the if missions was left as is, and the payout was just increased, then it would have a beneficial effect. How many entertainers have to spend some of thair skills points on something that can get them a income, how many people choose not to become entertainers and go with the profession that can earn credit, and then just hang out with entertainers to have fun?

I would hope a standard entertainer day would be like this: Log in, pay maint on our houses if they need it then pick the outfit we feel like that day. Run a few gig missions for 30 minutes to one hour to get the days income, then go the cantina and hang out and perform with our colleges. Then at the end of the day go back to out houses and if we got any good tips perhaps stop by the tailor shop to pick out a new peace or two for our wardrobe.

It does not matter if the gig mission takes us out of the cantinas, as long as we go there to have fun once our daily expenses are covered. If the public cantinas are empty from live entertainers then it is because the game design have failed to make entertainer a fun and viable play style.


As for getting respect from the general community, well that will never get to the point where it is common place, unless Musician becomes a ubre PvP profession.

The so called "1337 k!dz" only respect someone who have a chance to "pwn" them in a duel, and who can grind out a new template in a day or two. They tolerate weapon smiths and armour smiths and the like because they need the products to be übre. But go to the WS boards, and se how many WS have stories of "customers" telling them that they sux and are a noob, because a friend of a friend of the customer had a weapon of the same type with one more point in max damage.

Then we have the hardcore PvPers, they can get to respect us, but only if we provide a good service that makes them better in PvP. Yes buffs does that, but for it to be really usefully to them the buffs have to be available 24/7 and everywhere so they are never caught with out them. That is where buffbots excel, they can provide the hardcore PvP'ers with the buffs when ever and where ever it is needed. As live entertainers, we will never be able to do that, at least not with the current way buffs are handled.

Then we have the players who only want high end solo PvE, the ones looking for "the endgame". They do not wand to interact with us, as such they will always resend us for having to come to us and have thair BF removed, or to get the buffs they needs to solo the toughest mobs in the game. The non interaction of the Buffbots is what they wand, we have no hope of "earning" thair respect.

Well then we have the rest of the player base, the ones that respect us for choosing a profession they them self would not was to play and providing them with the service. The same ones that will go to a live entertainer over an AFKtainer. The same ones that appreciate the fun we can bring to the game in general and parties in particularly.
We already have thair respect for the most part, and we would still have it even with our buffs.

As I said, I do not think that is anything can be done to make being an entertainer respectable to the general player population. Our best hope is simply to make it fun for us, provides us with a income in depended from other players, and remove some of the reasons for some segments of the player base to resend us.
And I do not think that buffs, as the exist now, helps with that.

First of all, I would NOT advocate removal of mind buffs from the advanced entertainer it is the #1 source of income for the professions.

However, if that sort of action were to be taken it would make more sense to remove only the indirect or group buff. It is a lot harder, and would require 3rd party macroware (read against acceptable use policy) to AFK macro directed buffs. If you further wanted to reduce the ability to AFK macro, you can require active only healing. That would be the inverse of what is done now. Right now, if you want to NOT heal somebody, you have to /deny them. If you reverse that, you would also be able to enforce payment for services (or not), just as the medic profession.

But then, I am pretty sure most of what I just said has been said many, many times before.