Musician Archive

Proud of yourself? Because the truth of the matter is dear, that you are not doing anything all that special by doing this. In fact, it is boringly typical. And I'm sure that many players are grateful for leaving your buffhouse, but only insofar as they do not need to go back there for some time.

But make no mistake dear, players by and large don't go to your buffhouse because the like it. In fact, they hate it. Sure they like the buffs, but it doesn't mean they enjoy the process at all. And I can probibly imagine that they go there, group, alt-tab or ctrl-c, and ponder to themselves for the 3 to 10 minutes they are there as to why SOE even makes them pay homage to this silly ordeal that is going on in places like your buffhouse, or player cantinas, or even public cantinas.

And the ordeal is that neither buffbot owners like yourself, nor those who use buffbots see the venues as a place of activity, but as a place of apathy. A place where play ends, a senseless time sink where unattended characters service unattended audiences in an attempt not to show how these classes are to be played, but the futility of playing these things at all.

Because buffbots do not give the developers any reasons to keep these classes going, and they do not give players any guidance as to how to play these things. If anything, buffbots show the developers that these classes were a mistake to include at all, and gives players no guidance as to what to do other than press F1 to start the looping macro.

Tell me, have any buffbot owners, AFK macroers, or other unattendees read Sultrina's thread on dancing technique? Or read LadyTygress' essay, The Entertainer on SWG Stratics? Have any of you come forward to offer your advice on techniques to attract an audience? How to amuse them so they can have something to do other than press alt-tab, or put the ctrl-c screen up where every tick off the BF meter feels like hours? Because if you examine these forums, you may discover that our entertainment professions are very rich in technique. But it is a richness that perhaps you may not fully appreciate because it is not centered around game mechanics like buffing and BF. Rather, it is a technique that is based around doing the kind of things from making a tedious, simple, and boring mechanical process into something interesting and worthwhile.

Because we know that players hate going to the cantina. The cantina is a boring place, and its boring for a reason: they have left it up to us to make it more interesting. And I think it is most wise that you have made your buffbot public and free. You do nothing in the game mechanics sense that is worthy of compensation, and for that matter, neither do I. I get tipped for being immersive, funny, attentive, and interesting while I give the audience game mechanics. That's why I get tipped. That's why I get cheered.

And to tell you the truth, buffbots rely on playing entertainers for their own existance in this simulation. Because if it were ever to come to a point where the only entertainment services on a server are given out by unattended entertainment alts, the players will inevitably come to the conclusion of, "how is this fun?," "why am I doing this?," "why do we even have to put up with this farce in the cantinas any longer? Why can't we give these functions to real players rather than lot mules? Why do we have to reward players with double accounts simply for parking a toon?" And they will not only ask for the removal of your ability to manipulate the game world in a manner that defies the constraints of playability, but they will ask for the removal of these professions altogether. And they will have far more legitimate grounds to ask this than buffbots, if only to finally bury the agony of supporting a system where people who hate entertaining give mechanics to people who hate having to go to the buffhouse to get them.