Musician Archive
Thread: A Cvil request as to exactly how buffbots hut *you* as a player?
Alright dear, let's all be honest here. You say we do not understand how to play these professions, and that is the reason we don't like buffbots. Well what have you offered to us to help us do the kind of things that will get us paid? You haven't. I wrote abook practically on how to entertain at the keys. And I do admit, one can still pull moneyout ofthe cantina if one tries. Its work. Hard work. And I just hope thatlive entertainersrealize thateven if buffbots go away,they'll still have the same problems if they don't do more than simply heal or buff to get paid. But I have to ask you, JRock, do you personally even care if an entertainer makes an effort to provide what they do in an amusing way? Or do you see the attempt to be amusing as a distraction to our only real purpose, which is to heal and buff? I suspect the latter. But please dear. Do tell us, since you are such an expert as to how to play these professions.
Because I am hoping you can educate this dancer with over a year's experience this strange concept that I have difficulty comprehending. If buffing to us is second or third on our list of priorities, then what are the first and second priorities? And more to the point, how do these other priorities interfere with giving out buffing and healing effects? Because I really do not understand how playing this thing live makes us poorer buffers. For you see, when I am in a cantina, I can buff, interact, heal, create an amusing performance, and do a myriad of things all at the same time. In fact, I cannot help but generate game mechanics when doing a performance. In fact, it really is not up to me to give a player game mechanics at all. Because unless they /watch or listen to me, they cannot receive that which I have to give them.
And I do not understand why I do not serve the community when I enter into a cantina and perform. Moreover, I do not understand why "the market has passed me by." Do I not participate in the market when I step in a cantina and perform? Do I not sell some sort of product whereby someone may find it valuable? If I do not, why do I get tipped? And if its because people feel sorry for me, what seperates me from the AFK starport beggar? Or for that matter, the AFK buffbot?
I think you have what we do confused with other things, JRock. And it is a rather easy facet to be confused about. It is easy to look at our role as similar to doctors. But if that were the case, then why did I get tipped 40k for spending an hour on Dathomir science outpost as a novice dancer performing between two buffbots? Because they never tipped me because I was /watched. They tipped me because I was WATCHED. Moreover, why also did I earn next to nothing entertaining in Moenia for many players who /watched me as the sole entertainer? Because the things that I do through /watchare not all that valuable. In fact, they are worthless. And yes, its true that a sole buffbot at Theed can justify getting on a 10,000 credit join list. But what happens when you put a second buffbot there that only charges 5,000 credits to get on join list? What happens when you place a third buffbot there that does not ask for credits at all? It really does not change the reasons for putting the buffbot there at all. Because buffbots have nothing to do with gaining credits. Buffbots aren't even about market dynamics. Buffbots like yours are in the world to influence the game environment in a way that ordinary conditions will never produce spontaneously. And I'm not even saying its good or bad what you do, JRock, but just explaining what it is and what it isn't.
Because buffbots were never created to service the galaxy. Buffbots were originallycreated to service a primary character or a small group of characters. And market dynamics really doesn't play into the reasons buffbots are created. Buffbots are created for the purposes of manipulating the game environment in a way that no player operating under constraints may duplicate. To create and control an entity for the purposes of making the buffbot owner powerful.
A buffbot's presence is not any mannifestation of the "invisible hand" that regulates the market amongst rational actors, it is a very "visible hand" toinfluence the game environment in a way a rational actor would never do. Because would a rational actor spendhis or her limited game time servicing a cantina where maybe 15 people use it in a given day? Buffbots do it all the time. Would a rational actor stay online doing nothing but skill animating on Endor for 7 hours straight on the slight chance that someone may need them? Buffbots do it all the time. Would a rational actor truly find enjoyment in becomming a 24/7 dispenser of mechaincs simply for no other reason than to be a 24/7 dispenser of mechanics?
Its impossible to play a buffbot, because rational actors who are self interested do not make the decisions buffbots make. That's why buffbots have to be told what to do by an outside source. And to tell you the truth, JRock, the things that make buffbots valuable are not the things they share with entertainer players. They are valuable because they do not act like players at all. Its not the mechanics at all that makes buffbots attractive. Live players do that too. Its the 24/7 manipulation of the environment that makes buffbots attractive, which is something that we cannot do. Its not the fact that the buffbot makes the decision to be of service that makes them attractive. Live players decide every day to be of service. Its the fact that the buffbot has no choice but to dispense service that makes them attractive, which is something we cannot do. That is why they are powerful, pursued, and useful. I do not deny that individuals, cities, and guilds pursue buffbots because they provide them with great advantages. In fact, I understand the advantages all too well.
But if what you expect of entertainer is to mimic a buffbot, JRock, I am afraid you are asking the impossible. Because the things that make a buffbot a buffbot cannot be duplicated by players. And its not that I am saying this is right or wrong, but just the truth. But then this begs the question of why even have these professions around at all if the standard of service outstrips the ability to play it?
Message Edited by PoetDancer on 11-05-2004 06:54 PM
Baciacca wrote:
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.
I think you are right, the reason buff-bots exists is because there are problems with the way any live entertainer performs compared to a buff bot. They have enormous comparative advantages when it comes to providing all game-mechanic related functions - they are (nearly) always available, work as fast or faster than live entertainers, very often have financial backing making their buffs better than those most live entertainersprovide and they are free.
I think you are wrong, itsmostly not the entertainers fault. Its aproblem with the design and the implementation of it.Making buffs something that can only be acquiredfrom entertainers, making getting master musician/dancer require minimal atk time, thatrequires no resourcesapart from time on the part of the entertainer and that are fully automatable - it should have been obvious what the smart powergamer would do. I dont blame them.
I think buff-bots should never have been a possibility, but removal of recursive macros alone will do very little to help as long as there are no perishable resources required, very little player-skill differentiation in the game mechanics andtheservice requires the presence of entertainers. As you say, people will just log in with their alts - unless the devs come up with a more comprehensive redesign of the entertainer professions. Hopefully for the entertainers still in the game at that time, they will do just that.
Baciacca wrote:
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.
I truely believe the vast majority of entertainers are not terribly concerned with profits. Even if entertainers got paid for their buffing services, most could make a lot more money in any other profession ifmoney was their goal.
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.
You should actually quote my threads before you start retelling them incorrectly. In the threads where I have spoken about kill-stealing, I have not been the victim of the kill-stealing. In fact I have argued that there is no such thing as kill-stealing. My main points in the kill-stealing arguments was in regard to the disloyalty shown by members of guilds of the same faction that were allies kill-stealing from each other. Whether or not I need the big-game loot for my own livelihood isn't an issue, as I assure you I don't really loot hunt that much. Good job only reading the topic sentences of the threads I have posted in instead of actually reading what I wrote in that thread.
Fragpuppie wrote:
Baciacca wrote:
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.
I think you need to try to play a live ent character before you start blaming live ents for the rise of the buffbots.
I have played a Live entertainer since August of 2003, and have provided buffs for the entire time that buffs have been viable. I also play most of my time in Coronet Cantina, the armpit of the entertaining universe. Buffbots drove out the entertainers, they did not arrive to replace ones that were already gone. Yes, some entertainers left the cantinas when the Hologrind made them unbearable, however many of us stayed trying to give the impression that you CAN play a live character and not go crazy. We almost did. I have one friend who dropped all entertainer not because she didn't enjoy Coronet, but because the 60-100 player characters all playing and dancing made her crash every time she entered the cantina. I'm happy that now that the hologrind has eased, she has picked up master Dancer again. It is the ease of programming the bot (learned during the hologrind), the lure of "free money", and the convienience of 23/7 availability that brought on the buffbots not that live entertainers were nowhere to be found.
Prove us wrong! Go out and do everything you say. We have done all these things, and the bots are still there, the creds are not flowing. You "can only imagine the profits" that could be made because you never have played in this game as an entertainer trying to make their living.Before buffbots, Ihad 500K nights. Nowadays, I'm lucky to get a 5K night. And don't tell me I didn't fight for the customers, because I have. I, however cannot fight 23/7. I was destined to lose.
You know not of what you speak. That is VERY clear from this last post of yours.
How many months have you played your entertainer? How many hours have you played your entertainer ATK? How many of them in NPC cantinas? Trying to make a living? With buffbots in the same cantina?
I can answer all these very simply. 15.5 Months, Almost all, Almost all, maybe 75% as I have tried other profs, Since the buffbots started to go live.
Your theories are not sound and your ideas for live entertainers to compete do NOT work. This is from the experiance of someone who has PLAYED an entertainer, not someone who has many hours with an entertainer running on a machine with a cold keyboard from disuse.
Fragpuppie Uber
Master Entertainer, Master Musician
Guild Leader - Performer United Professional Society (PUPS)
Founding Member - Frag's Puppies
Contact S'ita for bookings
President and CEO - Fragpuppie Enterprises and Uber Instruments
Coronet, Corellia, Chilastra
No, my theories are sound. You are just unwillingly to listen to them. I probably play my "bot" more than others. In real life, I am a musically oriented person. I have played the piano and the guitar, and I was a lead tenor in my HS choir 5 years ago (still have good voice, but I just don't have money for lessons to keep it in good shape). I actually enjoy the entertainer professions. Maybe not as much as I enjoy the combat profs, but I have to admit that for the short time I was master entertainer and could play the guitar like instrument, I really enjoyed jamming to the beat.
Do you have any counter-arguments to my arguments? No, you don't. I played my entertainer before I turned it into a bot. I still play it on occaision. I'll never have the advantage a female (or someone who can fake being a female) will have, but I know that money can be made as an entertainer providing buffs. However, you have to go out and work for it. It won't just come to you.
The facts are that you have not utilized the business stragies that I have presented. You have only sat in the cantinas and expected the business and credits to come to you. You didn't want to take the effort to advertise or to orient yourselves with the market. That is why you want to call my principles unsound right now. Because you never have and never will put true effort into your profession. Now that you have let it go to waste, it will be harder than ever to gain market share back from the bots. Instead of working for it, you want the devs to just give it away to you. However, no matter what you think, there is nothing the devs can do to give you this market share back. Even if they take away recursive macros, nobody will want to associate with the players who have given them grief over the issue. Your attitude towards the situation is what currently and will always cause your profits to be low. If you do not realize the business situation you are in, you will never be successful in your endeavors.
Bilke wrote:
Baciacca wrote:
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.
I think you are right, the reason buff-bots exists is because there are problems with the way any live entertainer performs compared to a buff bot. They have enormous comparative advantages when it comes to providing all game-mechanic related functions - they are (nearly) always available, work as fast or faster than live entertainers, very often have financial backing making their buffs better than those most live entertainersprovide and they are free.
I think you are wrong, itsmostly not the entertainers fault. Its aproblem with the design and the implementation of it.Making buffs something that can only be acquiredfrom entertainers, making getting master musician/dancer require minimal atk time, thatrequires no resourcesapart from time on the part of the entertainer and that are fully automatable - it should have been obvious what the smart powergamer would do. I dont blame them.
No, it is the entertainers fault for not being readily available to provide buffs to the community when they started to become highly demanded. I don't see how leveling the profession is an issue. I have leveled multiple combat professions with macros. Simple macros that spam the best attack have leveled me through many combat professions quickly. The fact that leveling entertainer professions can be macroed is not the issue here.
I think buff-bots should never have been a possibility, but removal of recursive macros alone will do very little to help as long as there are no perishable resources required, very little player-skill differentiation in the game mechanics andtheservice requires the presence of entertainers. As you say, people will just log in with their alts - unless the devs come up with a more comprehensive redesign of the entertainer professions. Hopefully for the entertainers still in the game at that time, they will do just that.
I am glad that you understand that the end of recursive macros is not the solution. However, there is nothing the devs can do to make players logging on and playing their alts ATK not as viable an option as the other entertainers. The only answer is for the other entertainers to use their social skills to make themslves more desirable than a second account. Even if the game-system is more comprehensive, it will be not be so different that someone cannot ATK play their entertainer alt. If this were the case then it would be very difficult for any entertainer. It will ultimately fall to teh ATK entertainers using their charisma to gain market share. Just like it is now.
Baciacca wrote:
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.
I truely believe the vast majority of entertainers are not terribly concerned with profits. Even if entertainers got paid for their buffing services, most could make a lot more money in any other profession ifmoney was their goal.
Well then what are they complaining about? If profits do not matter then what is their concern? Maybe it is that they desire to feel needed by the other players. If this is the case, then they just need to advertise better that they are there to provide that greatly needed service. With the abily to sell a commodity so valuable as mind stat buffs, I can't see how it is so difficult to make money selling such a service.
Message Edited by Beery on 11-06-2004 05:01 AM
Baciacca wrote:
No, my theories are sound. You are just unwillingly to listen to them. I probably play my "bot" more than others. In real life, I am a musically oriented person. I have played the piano and the guitar, and I was a lead tenor in my HS choir 5 years ago (still have good voice, but I just don't have money for lessons to keep it in good shape). I actually enjoy the entertainer professions. Maybe not as much as I enjoy the combat profs, but I have to admit that for the short time I was master entertainer and could play the guitar like instrument, I really enjoyed jamming to the beat.
Do you have any counter-arguments to my arguments? No, you don't. I played my entertainer before I turned it into a bot. I still play it on occaision. I'll never have the advantage a female (or someone who can fake being a female) will have, but I know that money can be made as an entertainer providing buffs. However, you have to go out and work for it. It won't just come to you.
The facts are that you have not utilized the business stragies that I have presented. You have only sat in the cantinas and expected the business and credits to come to you. You didn't want to take the effort to advertise or to orient yourselves with the market. That is why you want to call my principles unsound right now. Because you never have and never will put true effort into your profession. Now that you have let it go to waste, it will be harder than ever to gain market share back from the bots. Instead of working for it, you want the devs to just give it away to you. However, no matter what you think, there is nothing the devs can do to give you this market share back. Even if they take away recursive macros, nobody will want to associate with the players who have given them grief over the issue. Your attitude towards the situation is what currently and will always cause your profits to be low. If you do not realize the business situation you are in, you will never be successful in your endeavors.
I give up on you. You have no concept of the realities...you also did not answer my questions as to how involved you are in this profession, thus showing that you do NOT havethe experience in trying to make a living as a live player. You don't even know that the "guitar like instrument" is called a Mandoviol.
I don't care to argue with you any longer as you have clearly shown that you are not listening to anything I have said.
You have not seen that I have tried to work at the profession, and that I have tried many of the things you have suggested. Though I admit that I could automate the various suggestions you made and leave them running 23/7 and gain back a degree of market share, I WILL NOT become a bot. You think that I have not put in "true effort". I have tried, but I cannot put in the same effort ATK as the bot can do 23/7. WHEN WILL YOU REALIZE THAT YOU CANNOT COMPETE EQUALLY. Given that, I have nowchosen to only compete when I A) Have time and B) Enjoy the challenge. I shall wait for the AFK fix. Its true, the devs will not "give" us this market back, however they will remove AFKing professions and thus remove competition that we have had. Yes we will need to "win" back the people who used buffbots, but most of the "winning" will be playing our entertainers and being available. If you choose not to come to us then great, you will lose in the game of balance as to who has buffs. Our attitude is that we want to "play" this game, at the keyboard, on an equal footing with other players. Yes, we are equal in that we CAN currently play a bot if we so choose, however the devs have stated MANY times that that mode of play is not what was intended and that it WILL go away. When that happens we will all be ATK and on a completely equal basis.
At this point, you shouldn't bother responding. I responded in detail to your first 5 posts, then read all your counter responses. These showed that you hadn't read my posts. I chose to try to summarise rather than point by point refute, and now you claim that because I CHOOSE not to continue talking when noone is listening, thatI have no knowledge. When challenged, you did not answer my questions regarding your qualifications as toif your theories would work. In your lack of response, I take it that you do NOT have the experience that is necessary to understand the problems of an ATK musician. Try it sometime and if you come up with a method that works,then you can tell us about it. From here out, I shall read your posts in this thread with the same amout of attention you have read mine....ie NONE.
Fragpuppie Uber
Master Entertainer, Master Musician
Guild Leader - Performer United Professional Society (PUPS)
Founding Member - Frag's Puppies
Contact S'ita for bookings
President and CEO - Fragpuppie Enterprises and Uber Instruments
Coronet, Corellia, Chilastra
Beery wrote:
Like a lot of relatively immature debaters,Baciacca seems to think that all his rhetorical skills and an unswerving belief inhisideologycan substitute for truecritical thinking and rational argument. Why are you folks being taken in by his sophistry? This guy doesn't really want an argument. He just wants to either piss you off more or get you to give in. He'sjust a troll-arguing morebecause he thinks he can gain arhetorical victorythan because of a deeply-held conviction that he's right. Engaging such a person in debate as if he's serious only serves to make his arguments seem more convincing to those who are unused to debate andwho can't see through his trickery.
But yet you continue to post replies to my statements. Why don't you practice what you preach? You provide no counter-argument to the reasoning and logic I have provided. You know that I am right and so you want an easy way out of the discussion without having to admit that fact. If I am a troll then you are one too. Just because I am adding to the discussion with ideas contrary to your own does not make me a troll. That's one of the main problems with posters like yourself. You think that anyone who makes an counter-argument to someone else's statements is a troll. You'd rather that the only people who ever posted just agreed with what was already said. How is it "trickery" for me to use my own logic and rational reasoning to prove my point? Is understanding ingame economics some kind of evil magic?
After all, let's face facts: it's not like he's gonna win any converts on this forum.All of us who have played for a few monthsknow that buffbots are all run bygriefers, we all know how illegal they are according to the TOS, and howharmful they are to the game. We certainly know that they steal from us, and that they lower the tone of whatever venue in which they appear. Those who are new to the game get taught these lessons very quickly by the buffbots themselves. This guy presents his own negative advertising by his very existence in the game. Engaging him in debate is pointless - it's atautology. A buffbot's own argument against its continued existence is surelyenough for any reasonable person to reach the right conclusion.
Again another unfounded and detrimental assumption. Not all buff-bot owners are griefers. Do you really think that people would take the time and spend the money to start up a buff-bot with the sole purpose of causing grief to other players? It's attitudes like this that have led more and more players to use the bots instead of the live entertainers. All the complaining that the ATK entertainers have done about these buff-bots has been a huge turn off to customers interested in purchasing services. It has made ATK entertainers even less desirable, and the more vocal ones like yourself give the others a bad reputation. Oh, and I've highlighted in red your statements there that don't even make any sense.
And anyway, his days as a buffbot are numbered. Why labour the point?
Wny do you continue to post then? If it's a done deal and buff-bots are going to end anyways, then why post? The truth is that buff-bots will not be stopped anytime in the forseable future. Either fiture out a way to compete against them or quit the profession. You yourself continue to post abou how you have quit the game before and how you are going to quit again, etc., so why do you continue to participate in this discussion? If there is anybody who should be paid no attention in this discussion it is you because you have already said you aren't going to play this game anymore anyways. You have no stake in the outcome.
Message Edited by Beery on 11-06-2004 05:01 AM
Most of you lost your business on Tempest because of the negative publicity you all gave yourselves when you complained about my buff-bot. The fact is that it's mostly the combat players and PvPerswho want to purchase the services that you provide. I belong to the best PvP guild on the server. When you began trolling every thread I posted on the forums and endlessly complaining about the service I provided, the combat players who saw my service as a great resource for them and who already considered me to be a good friend stopped wanting to associate themselves with the entertainers like yourself. When you denied service to every member of my guild the second they walked in the cantina, the word eventually got around. If you had chosen to compete with me instead of complaining and blacklisting people who did use my service, then maybe you would still have customers today. As it usually is, the bad attitudes of some of the entertainers on Tempest killed the ATK entertainer profits.
fett3041 wrote:
Several of us used to run the Mining Outpost on Dantooine. We performed every day, well into the wee hours of the morning. When my schedule changed, we performed from the early evening and through the night, and again, after the servers came back up. We had fun, the patrons appreciated us and our buffs, they were respectful, XP was flowing, and even though we never charged for buffs, we made some damn good credits.
But then, along comes a bot. She took up residence just inside the door, so she can be the first thing seen when folks come in. She started spamming her instructions every 60 seconds. The XP started to trickle, the buff requests were replaced with 'invite', and the night's take went from easily 100k to about 5k.
People who used to appreciate the buffs (yes, mine are CA enhanced), now go to her out of habit and convenience. I've asked on several occasions, "Why use the bot, when there's a live Ent here, offering services?"
The reply has always been "She's always here" or "Because I don't have to wait" (which is wrong since you have to wait for her entire 10 min cycle to restart, and my buffs only take 3 mins) or "Because I don't have to pay" (never had to pay me, either) or simply "F*** off".
No amount of promotion, advertising, or work will get the bot users to pick a live Entertainer over a bot. None.
PoetDancer wrote:
First of all, there are no profits in this profession, if you consider profits to be total earnings minus expenditures. As a dancer, I have no expenditure to providethe mechanics I do. I simply skill animate.
Wow, why am I trying to reason withsome of you who obviously have the understanding of a first grader. If your expenses are zero then all your revenues are pure profits. Just becuase expenses are zero does not mean that profits do not exist.
And as far as skill animation is concerned, I and a buffbot can do that equally well. Indeed, I really do not understand why you feel as if we are so reluctant to provide services when we are in the cantina. Like I said before, we cannot help but provide services when we perform in a cantina. Its not up to us to heal or buff players, or if there is some volition on our parts, it is rather miniscule and dependent wholly on another player's willingness to do their part to take charge of their own heal or buff. I maintain that you can't buff anyone with your buffbot. I maintain that no entertainer can. Because no matter how much we try and kid ourselves that we buff or heal, we can do nothing if another player isn't willing to /watch or /listen. Not a thing. Its up to them to /watch or /listen to an entertainer to get their healing or buff.
Giving an entertainer buff takes an effort on the part of the entertainer. Yes the receiver has to /listen or /watch, but the provider either has to join the group or /setperform on the target in order for a buff to be given. The healing is a public good that you provide. Anyone can partake of it as long as you are playing/dancing. Just because you are skill animating in the cantina does not mean that you are buffing. Another player cannot assume that you are willing to do your part of the process. You have to advertise that to them, just like the buff-bot is doing.
Now you say we need to advertise. What do you mean by this? Do you mean state on the forums where, when, and at what level we are buffing at? And how rigid of a schedule do you wish us to maintain? Every day? When we feel like it? I'm sure if you have something you need to attend to, this simulation is less of a priority than attending to some pre-ordained schedule. But then again, with unattendence being how it is, we'd merely have to set a macro and unattend to stay true to our service schedule. However, the only problem with that is then we become buffbots ourselves, which is what I think you really want now, isn't it, JRock? Buffbots that others pay for monthly instead of yourself.
By advertise I mean do everything you can to inform other players that you are providing your service. I mean posting on the forums, passing the word around to friends and acquaintances, speaking in spatial, sending tells to potential customers, etc. I would hope that if you plan on really making a business out of this profession that you would spend the majority of your ingame time being available to give buffs. It's probably more needed during prime hours. If you really wanted to be successful you would get a group of players together and try to form a schedule so that at least one of you would be available at any given time of the day. If there were time-slots when nobody could be available, then have somebody setup as a bot. I'm not saying that I want you all to turn into bots, but it would be a good business move to have someone available at all times in order to increase customer loyalty. Since switching costs are very low, efforts to keep customers coming back to you to purchase services is very important. I believe that when SOE designed this profession, they intended for players who ran buffing businesses both AFK and ATK.
Or do you mean advertisements in terms of our willingness to buff when we are performing? I really don't undertstand what you mean by this. If I am performing, I am able to buff. This should go without saying. In fact, I cannot help but buff if I am performing and a player groups with me. And indeed JRock, neither I, nor your buffbot can do much to buff anyone if a player is unwilling to do the things they are supposed to do to take charge of their own buff. This includes not /watching or /listening to anyone else, /watching a dancer whom they are grouped with, or /watching a dancer they are not grouped with to receive a subsequent /setperform. Maintain the /watch or /listen for a certain requisite time, and then to /stopwatch after the requisite time to receive a buff. And even if all these conditions are met, there is still the possibility the patron will get no buff at all.
Ok, already addressed advertising above, just because you are performing does not mean that you ARE buffing. You may be able to, but that does not necessarily mean that you are ready or willing to do so. You should have no problem getting your customers to watch or listen to you while you are buffing them. I have speaking lines in my buff-bot macro that tell players when to start and stop listening/watching. You should do the same thing and tell your customers what to do so that they can get the buffs in the most efficient manner. If they do it correctly, then they will get the buff. This right here should provide you with an advantage over a bot. A bot runs on a macro and if you mess up and don't listen or watch at the right times, you don't get the buff. With an ATK entertainer, you can ask your customer if they got the buff or not before you stop. You can make sure that they have done the right things when you start the buffing process. You should be able to provide the buff in a more efficient manner thana bot. The fact that you are at your keyboard should allow you to have more interaction on an individual level with customers.
Now you could say that we need to advertise in terms of shouting something on the order of "Buffing here at 113%. Type /join or send MaryLou a /tell." Perhaps also you'd suggest giving a disclaimer as to the things a player must do before /watch, time status reports and progress reports as to when to /startwatch, when to /stopwatch, a disclaimer as to what can and will affect the buff. In other words, do the types of things your buffbot and other buffbots do to cut through the complexity of it all for the sake of efficiency--however boring, tedious, and non-immersive they may be.
Think I already touched on this above. Yes a bot can do them, but an ATK player can do them more efficiently. For example I perform for longer than the needed 3 minutes on my bot to give players a buffer incase they join late or screw up. As an ATK player, you can probably do a better job of making sure that players get their buffs quickly.
But that does not cater to our strengths as live performers, JRock. That caters to yours. Because the things we as live performers have that buffbots don't are spontineity, variety, lightheartedness, immersive dialouge, jokes, and the like. These are the only things--like you said and I agree with--that we live entertainers need to build upon if we are to have any chance against the buffbots. But if we are constantly giving out instructions as to what we buff at, what to do, how long to wait, and when to stop watching or listening, we don't have much room to do much else dialouge wise, which makes our gameplay resemble a buffbot's. Now I do admit it may be easy enough to write a macro explaining this complex, non-immersive,and unwieldy procedure, just like a buffbot. But again, that's what you really want, don't you? You want we live entertainers to start to do the kind of things buffbots do, so you all don't need to spend extra money on accounts to give you buffbots.
I have to disagree that you don't have time to utilize your social skills as a competitive advantage. Besides my conversation lines that inform customers of how to get their buffs, I have a considerable amount of advertising spam to inform players of the items that are on the multiple vendors in my shop. It would not be a problem for someone to have real conversation with their customers. 6 minutes is longer than you think. I've given very indepth presentations in 6 minutes. As far as you acting like bots or not, I don't really care either way. I will always spend the 15 bucks a month for Jrock's account. He is also my armorsmith (which I enjoy playing) and I really need the lots with the game today filled with tons of different loot. I also find the convenience and availability of Jrock to be very important to my guild with all the PvP that we engage in. However, if other entertainers could be equally as available, I would use their services instead. Really when it comes down to it though, I don't think that anybody else could ever supply our needs as much as a second account entertainer. We will probably always have the need for an entertainer buffer in our guild just like we need doctors for buffs and a squad leader and other professions.
Because you see, JRock, even if we do all the things a buffbot does, we'll still not come close to duplicating what you do. Because an unattended alt does these things an entire day. We do not. An unattended alt does not get bored at the prospect of automating in a cantina for an entire seven hours just to be available if someone happens to enter the door. We do. You would too JRock, if you had to actively play your buffbot to continue being available. We desire to experience the world and content the same as any player, which means that at times we leave the cantina. But if we leave the cantina--even for a moment--we fail by the standards buffbots themselves have created. So even if we duplicate the methods that buffbots employ, we'll still come up short by buffbot standards. Live entertainers who employ the methods of buffbots don't have any advantage over a buffbot. They only start to resemble broken buffbots.
But the key is that you can provide something that buff-bots can't, and that is interaction. Even if you were not available 24/7 (although I've already discussed ways to help this situation) you could still get players to come to you because they desired interaction with you just as much as they desired the buffs. I know some entertainers in guilds on our server that actually do spend most of their time in their city's cantina buffing. They are sometimes ATK and sometimes AFK. There are lots of players who come to get buffs from them instead of a bot just because they like to interact with them.
But I don't blame you for taking advantage of the ease at which our bare mechanics can be automated. And I don't even blame you for taking advantage of a buffing procedure that is more an excersise in mathematic efficiency over the effort to be amusing. What I do blame you for is thinking that if we would just do the types of things you do, we'd not have any problems with buffbots.
...And of course we wouldn't dear, we'd become buffbots ourselves.
Well that's good that you don't blame me as I haven't done anything to try to cause harm to anyone. However, I still believe that ATK entertainers have an edge over buff-bots and that if they employed their advantages, they would be more successful and desirable than a bot. I know it works because there are players on my server who get a lot ofcustomersbecause of their charismatic nature. I do think that emulating some of the things that bots do some of the time would be very beneficial to your business. Don't think that being a bot part-time makes you a bot, or makes you a traitor to the other ATK entertainers. Just as a lot of the services provided by entertainers are passive, so is the play of the profession. I think it was designed this way so that people who have more passive gameplay times and schedules could have a profession to play that would fit this style. Players like stay at home moms with children that would often need to leave their keyboards to handle other things or players who had home businesses and often had other important issues come up.