Musician Archive

Elwyn: I'm sorry you have to take Novice Medic to do the FS Entertainer line. For what it's worth, you only need to do it for the short time it takes the quest. If the other village quests are any guide, that should just be a couple of days, maybe a week at most. Then you can re-learn Scout and go back to making money with Scout.

If you wish to unlock and fill 6 trees (24 FS skills), bear in mind that you'll have to spend 24 skill points (1 each), so again you will have to drop Scout anyway. Or something else.

JohnMarble: The devs have no intention of removing Entertainers from the game.

As for their thinking on the village,I can't anddon't speak for the devs, but the line of argument might run like this.I ask you to try to understand it -- not to agree with it. There's no point in shouting about it because it doesn't look like it will change.

First,entertainers can fill theentertainer-FS line with entertainer XP exclusively, which is the easiest, cheapest, and least risky way to do so,even if it can't be done AFK (which currently it can). Crafters will spend millions of credits doing the crafting quests. (Yes, millions of credits to do the crafting FS quests.) Combatants will spend money on buffs, ammo, cloning, insurance, healing BF and wounds, and they run the risk of death and degradation of items. Entertainers can earn their XP costlessly (unlike crafters) and without risk (unlike combatants).

The chief grounds for complaint is that the FS line requiresentertainers to getNovice Medic, which is a temporaryinconvenience, one that can be reversed after the day or so it takes to do the quest. The alternative, creating full-blown entertainer quests, has proven challenging because the devs can't easily create a computer system that measures how "well" one performs, since performance is subjective. The same is true of a Politician, why is why Politicians get no FS quests. By contrast, computer-generated and -monitored quests can easily assess how "well" a crafter, combatant, or medic performs. Along these lines, the devs might argue that the months of time they've put into the new audition quests have been met with at best a lukewarm response by players. Why expend all these dev resources on quests people will grumble about anyway, they might say. Playing medic for two days might well be more fun for everyone.

Second, entertainers can fill four of six boxes toward unlocking a second slot or becoming a Jedi or both. The basic complaint here is that one of those quests requires Master Medic, in addition to the one that requires Novice Medic. (It's not clear whether the other two "survey" quests require any Artisanskills at all, and if so which.) Again, the devs would say filling these boxes is cheaper and less risky for entertainers than for anyone else. Moreover,the devs might add: well, if you want to unlock and fill 24 boxes, you've got to spend 24 skill points to do so. That alone means you're going to have to respec your character to some extent. Moreover, they'd add, to unlock that second slots, you've got to get through the exit quest from the village, which is a very tough fight, again implying that you need to respec. On top of that, the Padawan trials also imply that you need to respec, sinceat least five or six of them involve combat. So even if your only goal is to unlock an alt, you must use combat at the exit and Padawan stages to do so, so it's not unreasonable to ask you to respect toward combat as you do the village quests. If your goal is not just to unlock an alt but also to become a Jedi, then you've got no grounds for complaint, since Jedi is a combat profession. If you're going to be a Jedi, you'll be surrendering most if not all your entertaining skills.

That's the core of the argument. If you just want the one FS skill, then you just need to take Novice Medic, which the devs would say is at most a minor temporary inconvenience. If you want to do the whole monte and unlock an alt, then you've got to respec anyway because that costs 24 skill points and requires combat (exit quest plus Padawan trials). If you want instead to make Jedi, then you have no cause for complaint because Jedi are combatants who need to surrender Ent skills to survive. Whichever route you choose, filling your boxes is cheaper and less risky (and possibly quicker, and possibly AFK) for you than for any other profession. That's the argument they'd make.