Musician Archive
Thread: Nerf AFK-Performing
My Spin?
While I am an advocate of players doing what they want, we as entertainers do have a slight issue here.
My stance as I've stated before dont come in the band, force us on sw1 or 2 and go afk.
I think some sort of timer on the mouse cursor wouldnt hurt us and might help this rising issue.
We need to be needed. We are certainly not NPC's and shouldnt imitate one even if they are successful.Just my O..
Frankly tho this isnt our big issue.
True musicians and entertainers who bring something to Cantinas ,events,parties etc are in dire neeeeeed!!
Our customers want more tunes, more variety, more instrument variations.
I want music to play for intro's at events. I want a bit more range.
We desperatly need more songs. Our clientele are sick of hearing our current arsenal.
Someone wants to go afk in some Cantina ...have at it. This is small compared to our other priority and that is to play for our customers.
As far as tips yes I think akf peops might have affected tips to a small degree.
I learned long ago not to depend on tips for survival. My money is from hunting and of course parties that I work.
I go to a cantina to simply jam with friends.
We as musicians need to really Gel friends. We need to focus on the tools and songs we have and what we need.
Not on what other players are doing.
Just my spin.
macros are not bad. in fact if you are not using a macro you are really overworking for it. i am ALWAYS on a macro. how is it possible to keep flourishing while holding a conversation?
afkers dont bother me at all. of all the MMs i have met that went up that route NONE of them are still MMs. they made it to master then moved on. what a waste for them.
i have said it once and i will say it again, if you are worried about not getting tipped as much because there is afkers you are probably not that good of an entertainer. i dont get tips from sitting back and staring at a blank screen, i get tips for interacting with people. laughing, having an overall good time. you know like playing naked twister... ahem.
the only thing that does bother me is the afkers that put something stupid in their macros about tipping. not only are they not there but they are begging people for money. but then i dont like people who do that while not afk too.
for the record i am only afk while getting food/drink or going to the bathroom.
[[sigh]] Flamers abound...It's amazing how many non-entertainers feel the need to put in their two-cents worth. I didn't read too much in-depth what everyone wrote, but I will try and address a few of the ideas presented. One person mentioned people worried about tips, that they might not be good entertainers. Well, these professions are not like the typical class in a game. We all have the same identical flourishes, the same instruments (which almost all tend to sound identical), so there is no issue about who is good or not. The point is, why watch someone who is not AFK, and feel the guilt of not tipping them, when you can watch someone who is afk and not have to tip. Secondly, let's compare entertainer classes to the other classes in the game. SOE sent a very clear message when they nerfed artisans from afk-surveying. Also, how many combat classes are there that can fight afk? When it comes to game balance, the exploitation of the built in macro system (game-mechanics) gives entertainers an unfair advantage in leveling over the other classes in the game. Well you might say, artisans could get rich off of selling the resources they sampled, but an entertainer really can't get rich. That wasn't why SOE nerfed afk-sampling. It was nerfed because it gave that class an unfair advantage in gaining xp as well as creating some server over-populatin issues. By utilizing macros, as well as some other techniques, and going afk for periods longer than 30 minutes, entertainers are then given an unfair advantage over all other classes. Only we can go afk and come back with 3 new skills to train. We can make master musician in 5 days by afk'ing. I'm sure the combat classes would love to be able to do what we do. The point is it's an unfair advantage granted to us by exploiting the game mechanics.
Now for the issue of talking via macros while afk, yes, it is a nuisance. I'm sure the EULA covers spamming, scrolling, and other behaviors disruptive to other people's gameplay time. Talking via a macro while AFK does violate the EULA, it's considered spamming. Don't believe me, go afk, talk with your macro, have someone /report you, and if SOE is actually enforcing the rules finally, you will get booted and/or suspended. For the people that beg for tips, begging is just bad. No disagreement there. Oh and the person that said they pay 14.95 for their freedom, read the EULA. You have no rights. You are not paying for any rights. Your toon belongs to SOE, it's name, it's image, everything. If anything you say or do offends SOE, they can take it away from you. You have no rights when you pay to play a game. And honestly, in my opinion, a lot of the responses to this thread are off topic rants and are not constructive.
The topic: Nerf AFK-Performing. The Question: Why? The Answer: It gives entertainers an unfair advantage to gaining new levels/xp. The secondary issues: It can increase server over-population, degrades the quality of game play for others, etc etc etc.
Anyhow, I'm done, only reason why I replied is cause I was too tired to care what the flamers are going to say. Feel free to pick out all of my typos and grammer mistakes and flame me.
Bandlero wrote:
The topic: Nerf AFK-Performing. The Question: Why? The Answer: It gives entertainers an unfair advantage to gaining new levels/xp. The secondary issues: It can increase server over-population, degrades the quality of game play for others, etc etc etc.
I disagree with the order here. I don't think it gives Entertainers much of an unfair advantage, because they aren't competing against classes that can't AFK macro. The BIG problem with AFK macroers is one of the secondary issues you listed: It degrades the quality of the game for others. Degrade is almost an understatement.
It cheapens the class, and it ruins my experience. Surely it ruins other musicians and dancers experience as well...and even non-entertainers.
I understand the argument that a macro is helpful to some on remote planets. I personally have felt the nuisance of macroed, spamming musicians, however.
One potential solution which may satisfy both camps, if I may.
Add a "silence" command amongst musicians. If player A is actually present and player B is macroing for the sake of customers at odd hours, let player A temporarily "silence" player B while in cantina.
This way, the present musician is able to get business and enjoy the profession. The "silence" command would be temporary so that when player A leaves, Player B's macro will eventually kick back in to help our beloved customers in need.
Best,
Ast'erix
Eclipse
/agree
**edit** this away from keyboard nonsense in the bud. You wanna be a Entertainer of some kind, that's cool. ENTERTAIN. AFK performing isn't entertaining, it's just a cheap talentless way to get ahead. I don't feel your pain. As an Entertainer of any variety, you have a responsibility to the rest of the community in which you belong to provide quality entertainment to your patrions. When you don't do that, you're not an entertainer. Noone in the "biz" should be just a healbot. We're better than that, and if we aren't, we **edit** well should be!
You have busy lives that keep you from sitting around pushing buttons? Ha!And yet you pay for a game that will involve a lot of sitting around pushing buttons! We must be operating under some newfangled defination of "busy" then.Or... maybe you're a casual player! That's fine, not a problem. Just don't causally make the rest of the entertainers in the game world look worse for your membership in our (ingame) ranks!
Believe it or Not, Ripley, people for some reason think we're all macro-driven NPC rebels without a clue! I myself never macro, and somehow I manage to flourish and even sound halfway decent. It's not THAT hard, cmon. If you don't want to put in the time for it, don't BE it. Better we not see a NPC-impersonator in the cantinas/theaters/hotels of SWG, there are dozens of genuinely real fake people already provided to us by SOE in the form of real live NPCs.
Healbots we are not. Luminous beings of radical funk we are. *shakes his gimer stick at you and wiggles green hairy ears* Get without the program, Neo. Macros aren't cool, especially not when they play your game for you. There can be only one, and that one shalt not be a macro-driven anything. (Be glad.)
Sermon is ended. Go in peace, love, and that other stuff that gives y'all fuzzy feelings inside.
Sefen Vyngaard- Starsider
I cant understand why people get so agitated about all this.
-IfI go to a cantina to get healed and there is only1 AFK macro person I will tip this person. I am happy with the fact that he saved me from traveling to another planet.
-If you go to a cantina with 1 AFK macro person and 1 person who is there, then I will tip the person who is there.
-AFK people in full cantina's dont bother me either, but if there are non-AFK people I will tip the non-AFK people.
So the question is, why does it bother you so much that people AFK macro? Play your own game, unless they are somehow taking away from your own game, let them be.
-The only thing that bothers me is when people have macros that beg for tips. I hate spam in any form.
I am on my way to master dancer, but was requested to pick up a horn and develop my musician skills by a member of my PA. It seems he never has anyone to play with when he does the upper level songs. As a favor to him, and the fact that I like to hear a full band rather than an individual, I started down the musicians road. I don't afk macro, well I didn't until I started on musician. I don't really have any need or desire for musician, so I'd rather not waste what game time I have by skilling up on it. My proffesion of choice is dancer, and I don't macro dance. When I get musicianship up to a comparable level as my friend, i will quit macroing and playing my horn, until a band comes in that needs an extra, at that point i'll stop dancing and fill in the holes. I personally don't have a problem with people AFK macroing, but it is kind of annoying when they are standing in the middle of the performing area. The more in the group the faster the XP goes, so the AFKers are helping me at the same time as healing those that come in. Not too big of an evil in my opinion. Of course the cantina I am ussually in rarley has more than 2 afkers, if it were all afkers I would probably have a much bigger problem with it. A full cantina looks more fun and realistic, whether they are afk or not. An empty cantina is somewhere no one wants to be.
Datho
I am a master musician.
1) If we didn't have AFK macro's, people on distant planets wouldn't get mind wounds healed.
2) When you become a master, try making money. The only people that tip are in far away places. Are you going to sit there and wait for them? Three show up an hour, at most.
I consider it a good deed when I leave myself playing for my fellow rebels. I don't need the xp, or their money. I just like helping people.
Musician is "THE" most boring job. As soon as I get scout up, I am dropping the entire tree. Face it, this is a "chat room" class, that is for people who like drama. Who cares if they are afk, just ignore them. Is it really a problem if they "worked" less than you to get there? How hard are you really working? You are standing around talking.
Eon_Blue wrote:
...
AFK macroing in the middle of theed cantina isn't very nice, but it can serve a useful purpose in those small town cantinas where there is rarely an entertainer present.
good point ... 
... and well said