Musician Archive
Thread: A Cvil request as to exactly how buffbots hut *you* as a player?
LyteFoot wrote:
. . . . . . .Some people don't want RP, they don't want interaction, they don't want down time from shooting stuff, all they want is a game where they and their small universe of friends can hang together and blow stuff up.. . . .
Goldshadow wrote:
LyteFoot wrote:
. . . . . . .Some people don't want RP, they don't want interaction, they don't want down time from shooting stuff, all they want is a game where they and their small universe of friends can hang together and blow stuff up.. . . .
.Then why, by all that's good with the Force, do they play in an MMORPG. There are plenty of games out there where a small group of people can get together and blow stuff up. SWG shouldn't be that kind of game.
Just my humble opinion. I'll crawl back under my rock now.
I'll bet that its the same reason we are all still here and its not to be in an MMORPG.
Its:
Cause we liked to play lightsabre with the wrapping paper tubes.
Cause we liked to do our best impersonations of the Darth Vader breath or the Chewie howl.
Cause we liked to dream of cruising down our hometown streets on a speederbike, a snow speeder, an ATST, an x-wing or, my personal favorite, the Millenium Falcon....guns a blazin'
They like PVP, and they like the (more) complete Star Wars Universe. Yes there are other games out there in the universe, but this one allows for more "pretend", even if they don't like to "pretend" with others who they are not killing with or trying to kill.
Fragpuppie Uber
Master Entertainer, Master Musician
Former Master Dancer, Former Master Image Designer
Coronet, Corellia, Chilastra
Fragpuppie Uber'II
Master Entertainer, Master Musician, Master Image Designer
TestCenter
Because being persistent they can build things you can't build in a multi-player non-persistent game. Player cities, bases, reputations with the opposing teams, etc. Even though they don't want to role play in some peoples way of thinking they do play roles by building reputations within their own group. A persistent world environment offers things an instanced game won't give you.
Goldshadow wrote:
.Then why, by all that's good with the Force, do they play in an MMORPG. There are plenty of games out there where a small group of people can get together and blow stuff up. SWG shouldn't be that kind of game.
Just my humble opinion. I'll crawl back under my rock now.
Eaca wrote:
We're a social bunch. And yes we like to have fun and joke around and all that, but sometimes we want to invite guests out to our houses, or update our wardrobes with a cool new weapon or armor piece we've seen somebody else with (hacks, NS lances, and NS biceps are the big ones in this catagory). We want to have nice skill enhancers like the combat guys can get, to make us heal faster and buff better. Not only do we want houses and the means to maintain it, but we want to decorate them nicely, using some of the more colorful and nice decoration items.
Crafters can harvest resources and sell them at incredible markups using thier spent skillpoints to make money, making millions a day. Combatants can run missions to make money, upwards of several hundred thousand credits an hour. Scouts with a bit of combat can harvest high demand creature resources for crafters, further suplimenting thier income. As an entertainer I have 2 means to make money. Entertainer missions, and tips. Have you ever looked at an entertainer mission terminal? As a master dancer/entertainer/musician I can make about 170-190 credits per mission, I can take 2 missions at a time, and they take 10 minutes or so to complete. Thats about 2.4k per hour for my 203 skill points expended, a master rifleman with no other skills can make 300k or so an hour with 92 skill points expended running missions. So workinga 4 hour "shift" I might be able to make as much as 10k for "free" (no expenditure of resources to make this) to buy a new outfit from a reasonably priced tailor, while the rifleman may spend 12k on buffs, 10k on brandy, loose an equivalent of 28k or so on weapon and armor condition, and come away with a net profit of 850k (and thats only for 3 hours total "work").
Obviously entertainer missions are not intended to be any of our source of income past our first few days. So that leaves us with our SP expendature and dreams of having "nice things" with only one other way to make money... tips. This is where buff bots hurt us. I've met numerous people that would rather wait longer for an inferior buff by a bot, or just go without all together, than to get a buff from a live entertainer. Buffbots can make several hundred thousand a day, generally money for thier "main" while the "real" entertainers do like you say you do, and live off of pocket change.
Can you tell me why you feel your expenditure of skill points in entertainer skills makes you entitled to less of the "benefits" in the game than a combattant or crafter? Why do I have to go without the nice things because I chose to be a dancer or musician? I'll tell you why, because no matter how nice I am, no matter how outgoing and available I make myself to heal and buff, I can never be as convienient as a bot, who never needs to go anywhere, never needs to stop, just have its main come by every so often and collect the money and drop of some more skill enhancing cloths (because lets face it, at the prices ent skill tapes go for, only the bots can afford them). Bots offend me because the general populous feels that a few lines of text are more valuable to the comunity than the "real" me. In order to get the things I want, and will want with the upcoming expansion, I HAVE to either drop ent skills for combat, or purchase a second account to turn into a money mule (I've chosen the later). So little of the population even bothers with ATK ents any more. I'd say we're down to less than 1% of the server populations that tip ANYTHING to live ents, I've met new entertainers that have been working on dancer or musician for weeks that still only have one outfit other than thier newbie outfit that was given to them by an older entertainer, most of them can't even afford an X34 yet, they've seen maybe 10k in total tips (the lucky ones) and sometimes the money I give them is the first tip they've EVER recieved. Why? Because most people now go exclusively to bots for both buffs AND healing, EH xp is becoming a rare comodity. Do you honestly expect these new players to go get ent missions? That means either they sacrifice thier healing and dance/music xp for a pitiifully small amount of money, or they split thier pitance with a sea of AFK, netting themself 10 credits instead of the 200 they were trying for.
Buff bots have distroyed the econimical viablity of this profession. Buff bots have turned cantina's into places hostile to the very people they are supposed to house. Buff bots have turned the player base even more against the live entertainer. And combined the hologrind and buff bots have resulted in a DRASTICALLY reduced entertainer population compared to before all this happened (and declining server populations only account for a fraction of this).
Do I have fun as a dancer socializing? Yes. Is a big damper put on my fun when somebody comes in asking where the bot is, and flat out declines my offer to buff them live? Very much so. Am I gonna laugh my ass off when macros go away and mind buffs are impossible to find because live entertainers have been driven to the brink of extinction? You bet your ass.
Except that this will never happen. It is highly improbable that the devs will still put an end to recursive macros because of the outcry on its effects to the rest of the game. Even if they do go through with it, it will still be possible to run bots entirely on aliases. Even if they get rid of that, most will still be able to get buffs from their guild's entertainer bot. It just means that the person who owns them has to pay a little bit more attention than usual.
No, the only way for this to end is for the entertainers to realize that they have a competitive advantage in being at the keybaord and able to socialize with the customers. They must utilize this advantage to regain market share that they have lost due to complacency.
Baciacca wrote:
Except that this will never happen. It is highly improbable that the devs will still put an end to recursive macros because of the outcry on its effects to the rest of the game. Even if they do go through with it, it will still be possible to run bots entirely on aliases. Even if they get rid of that, most will still be able to get buffs from their guild's entertainer bot. It just means that the person who owns them has to pay a little bit more attention than usual.
No, the only way for this to end is for the entertainers to realize that they have a competitive advantage in being at the keybaord and able to socialize with the customers. They must utilize this advantage to regain market share that they have lost due to complacency.
Baciacca wrote:
No, the only way for this to end is for the entertainers to realize that they have a competitive advantage in being at the keybaord and able to socialize with the customers. They must utilize this advantage to regain market share that they have lost due to complacency.
Message Edited by PoetDancer on 11-04-2004 08:32 PM
fett3041 wrote:
Baciacca wrote:
Except that this will never happen. It is highly improbable that the devs will still put an end to recursive macros because of the outcry on its effects to the rest of the game. Even if they do go through with it, it will still be possible to run bots entirely on aliases. Even if they get rid of that, most will still be able to get buffs from their guild's entertainer bot. It just means that the person who owns them has to pay a little bit more attention than usual.
No, the only way for this to end is for the entertainers to realize that they have a competitive advantage in being at the keybaord and able to socialize with the customers. They must utilize this advantage to regain market share that they have lost due to complacency.
Coming from one of the most notorious buffbots on Tempest, we'll take this with a grain of salt.
You see, the Devs aren't out to kill recursive macroing if they can help it. As I'm sure we'll all agree,it's a wonderful tool. But when the tool gets abused, then it becomes a problem.It's the unattended gameplay that's the issue. That includes running AFK with aliases.
Tiggs let us in on a little secret: Recursive macros are still an issue (well the issue behind them still is), and after that, we can expect changes to the EULA in that regard.
Again, at this point, I don't even have a problem with a secret buffbot stashed away in a private cantina/guildhall/house, which is used for a small group of friends. However, when you start advertising it across the galaxies and forums, or plant them in the public cantinas, then we have a problem.
It's not complacency when you greet everyone who comes in the cantina, only to be snubbed in favor of the bot.
And when I did advertise (which orignally was only to level myself through merchant with my alt as the bait to lure players through my entry fee) all of the other entertainers on Tempest complained instead of advertising themselves. Instead of trying to beat me at a competitive level, you simply complained and gave up. This is exactly what I see most entertainers doing, giving up. They never even tried in the first place.
Greeting somebody does not mean that you are advertising your buffing service.
PoetDancer wrote:
Baciacca wrote:
No, the only way for this to end is for the entertainers to realize that they have a competitive advantage in being at the keybaord and able to socialize with the customers. They must utilize this advantage to regain market share that they have lost due to complacency.
All fine and good, but is there a market for socialization? You seem to think that this is some commodity that can be sold at market prices. Well what's the going rate for socialization lately? And what's my consumer base for it?
Because I put great care into my routines. In fact, I am one of the rare few that do these days, since most of my kind has left.
But I gotta tell you, Baciacca, the kind of things I can do that a bot cannot aren't looking like things players want these days.
So I have to say that the only way this thing will end is when the last live entertainer ups and quits. And then you'll have a new problem on your hands. One that's more thorny, and more problematic. You see, we live entertainers have an incentive to service as many players as we can. But a buffbot owner's problem is the exact opposite. Their concern is not for players to use the buffbot. Their problem is keeping players from using the buffbot. So when they start denying service to players and entire guilds for losses in PvP, or because of some bulletin board insult, what will you do then?
Not come to us dear, we'll be gone.
Yes, there is a market for socialization. If you are a female player (or can roleplay one well) you've got a competitive advantage in this area above the majority of other players. You're going to tell me that the majority of male players, many of which are younger teenagers or single adults don't want interaction with a female? Give me a break. If you aren't able to use seductive abilities to gain a competitive advantage then you have only yourself to blame and your lack of social skills. Believe it or not, everybody who plays this game picked it over a console game because they do desire some form of interaction with other people in their game experience.
Last thing i want to comment on, stop trying to convince yourself that the rest of us are going to "Pay" whenever this supposed change is made. We're not going to suffer any negative consequences if you all give up on your profession. I personally will never suffer because I am the frickin bot. I originally bought my second account so I could have a crafter and a master musician buffer for my guild because at the time, it was a highly demanded commodity that we had trouble acquiring. I don't have a problem with people not using my toon for buffs. I admit that I do have people banned from my shop for various reasons, some of them the ones you have mentioned. The thing is though, that most of the big PvP guilds have their own bots. Just because they won't be able to run them as a bot all day anymore does not mean that they won't be able to log them on to provide the buffs to everybody. What will happen will be the same thing that has happened with the Merchant nerf. People just bought more accounts to have a merchant on the side. It was an end result that many people didn't want to choose, but in the end, the benefit of being able to sell their goods was worth another 15 bucks a month. It will be the same for those who really desire buffs and can't find dancers/musicians to provide the service. Also, do not assume that you are all together on this. If there is a high demand for entertainer services and players are willing to pay well for those services, players will flock to that profession in order to get in on the profits. Supply and Demand will always stay in effect.
Baciacca wrote:
If there is a high demand for entertainer services and players are willing to pay well for those services, players will flock to that profession in order to get in on the profits. Supply and Demand will always stay in effect.
Beery wrote:
I'd just like to remind folks that this Baciaca guy complains about kill-stealing in combat-related threads but runs a buffbot. He doesn't like it when people take away his livelihood but when he's the one doing it, that's just fine. Baciaca, you're such a hypocrite.
Of course he does, after all with the group that makes these arguements its always about improving their personal playing experience regardless of the impact to anyone else. They must win at all costs, they must be in god mode every moment, they must be uber. Its so repetative and so common in all online games. Net anonymity allows them to be totally self centered while arguing that its all meaningless.
They simply don't get that it isn't "just a game" its people, relationships, feelings, and social interaction. They don't care as long as THEY get the win button.
LyteFoot wrote:
Beery wrote:
I'd just like to remind folks that this Baciaca guy complains about kill-stealing in combat-related threads but runs a buffbot. He doesn't like it when people take away his livelihood but when he's the one doing it, that's just fine. Baciaca, you're such a hypocrite.
Of course he does, after all with the group that makes these arguements its always about improving their personal playing experience regardless of the impact to anyone else. They must win at all costs, they must be in god mode every moment, they must be uber. Its so repetative and so common in all online games. Net anonymity allows them to be totally self centered while arguing that its all meaningless.
They simply don't get that it isn't "just a game" its people, relationships, feelings, and social interaction. They don't care as long as THEY get the win button.
First of all, no one should really be concerned about the well-being of others above themselves. I do care about the balance of the game systems as I believe it is necessary if this game is to continue to exist. However, I do try to "win" at all costs. That doesn't mean that I try to be in god mode, but I do try to acquire the best equipment and have the best skills available. I'm not a roleplayer. I like playing video games, and I like interacting with people. I don't bring my feelings into this game because it's a game. I usually leave my feelings and emotions to real life.
If you think that all online games are like this then why do you play one? Youseem tobelieve that the online gaming world is mostly smacktards that are going to make you upset so why do you choose to exist in their environment? As much as you believe that it's people like me who are the problem in this situation, I think you're looking in the wrong place. I would have been happy without my own personal entertainer, but there got to be a point in this game where I and my friends could not acquire the services of entertainers on a consistent basis when the demand for them was very high. I didn't make a buff-bot out of spite towards the entertainers, I made one because I saw it served a need of many people who could not find buffs. As soon as I started up my bot (which was orignally only supposed to be temporary) I immediately received negative feedback from the entertainers on my server. They would troll my threads and do all they could to put a negative light on my bot. So after having been treated the way I was, I did have some motivation to return the favor and keep my bot running after I no longer needed it to level merchant XP. The other entertainers on the server were quick to claim that they had created a black-list of those who used my bot and that they would not render services to those individuals. Considering that a lot of these people where friends or allies I have ingame, I decided I should provide the services they needed as it was easy and simple for me to do so.
I think that you will find the reasons why others have created buff-bots is similar to my own. If you think it was because we didn't want to give up a few credits to get the buffs, you are very mistaken. The entertainer economy is the way it is now for many reasons, and most of them are because of inadequacies that entertainers as a whole developed. Whether it was availability, convenience, efficiency in providing their service, or the quality of the service they provided, all the blame should be placed on the shoulders of those who created the problem. It wasn't the buff-bot owners, although many of you will continue to lie to yourselves in order to dodge your own guilt. Buff-bots arose because of a failure in the entertainers to provide a highly demanded service. If only more innovative players had headed the profession at the time things necessitated the change, I can only imagine the difference that we could see today and the profts that could have been made.
It's not too late to make those profits, but it will require more work to do so than it would have in the past.