Dancer Archive
Thread: Proposal for Modifications to Quest Performance Rating Mechanics
Introduction
Since the initial introduction of the Theater Manager Entertainer Quest on TC, I have been interested in the mechanics devised for NPC’s to ‘judge’ the performance of an entertainer player character, and in how such mechanics could develop into greater forms of “PvE” gameplay for entertainer content. The first of my ideas for adaptation of the Entertainer Quest mechanics into other forms of content intended for entertainer gameplay is found in my Fame system proposal.
Herein lie ideas for adaptation of the actual core mechanics used in coded appraisals of our aesthetic performances, in the interest of converting the existing set of mechanics into one form of true entertainer mini-games.
The Current Quest Mechanics
The current Quest mechanics can be summed up thusly: Player must talk to the NPC audience, who then, based on random roll, may or may not provide information regarding what songs/dances they’d prefer to see/hear during that performance, as well as which flourishes are preferred or not. The player then utilizes any information gained through that initial polling stage during the performance. If the player performs sufficient numbers of preferred flourishes on the preferred song(s) or dance(s), the Audience Satisfaction Rating (ASR) increases. If the player performs those songs, dances or flourishes flagged as undesirable to the audience, the ASR will drop. “Neutral” songs/dances and flourishes, those not specifically rolled as “good” or “bad” appear to have little to no bearing on the ASR.
I think that this is a very good starting point for addressing the challenge of how to ‘judge’, from a coded environment perspective, the quality of a performance which is normally something subjective. However, the current system has its’ flaws.
Assuming that the player is paying attention to the responses and understands that the preferred song/dance and flos should be used heavily during the performance, this effectively means that the entertainer gameplay involvement is over and done once the audience has been polled. The only real question is whether or not enough favorable rolls are achieved in getting the information out of the NPC audience members – tantamount to the initial table-roll of NPC responses being the actual ‘gameplay’ involved in the current state of the mechanics.
Additionally, many entertainer players feel that the concept of running around in the audience schmoozing for comments just before the performance starts is counter-immersive. We don’t see superstar rock bands running around in the audience just prior to show time, and this element of the current process feels artificial to many community members.
Evolution of the Quest Mechanics - Precedent
Perhaps if there was a way to more closely emulate ‘feeling out the crowd’ while performing, and adjusting a performance based on feedback given, we could involve the entertainer player more in these quest performance mechanics. A good example of this concept is found in the original Blues Brothers movie, when the band opens up a normal R&B set for the crowd at Bob’s Country Bunker. Following booing, thrown bottles and the stage lights being turned off, the band says, “We’d better figure out what these people like, and FAST!” Switching to Rawhide and Stand By Your Man, the Blues Brothers’ ASR begins to skyrocket.
(next up... Proposal Overview and Mechanics)
I bet that was the original intent but they couldn't get it to work right. So they changed it to a system where you need to poll the audience.
I as well wish something more immersive would have been implemented when the quests were first designed. (I'm pleased that you addressed ASR monitoring at the end. Watching the audience from the stage simply could not work.) Lovely! Even though I haven't done either the dance or music mission yet, I've been aware of how it worked, and thought that the basic idea was ok, but needed some tweaking. I was thinking it should move more toward an active feedback mechanism kind of like an "applause meter" that you can monitor while performing and adjust your dances and flourishes accordingly - it would be more like a dance or music "mission" where the goal is to try to figure out what will please the crowd while you're performing without knowing in advance what they may or may not like. I also wanted to take this concept and apply it to other areas as well such as maybe healing and defininitely buffing. What if to buff someone you have to actively monitor some kind of meter that tells you how they like the performance you're doing for them? If the meter starts going down, try a different flourish or a different dance to try to make the meter go back up, and then when you have them in a sufficiently high state for a long enough time, they receive the full buff. Such a mechanism would have to be randomly generated for the entertainer for each buff request, as the person receiving the buff probably couldn't contribute to this process in any meaningful way. They likely wouldn't want to do anything to make it harder for the entertainer to give a buff, and probably want to do as little as possible on their end to receive the buff. Thus this mechanic would likely all be on the entertainer's side. This would be yet another way to require active user interaction to give a mind buff. If you want to still keep some concept of audience likes and dislikes that maybe you can still find out about, then they need to get away from the concept of referring to flourishes as flourish 1 or flourish 6, but instead say things like 'dance moves with kicks' or 'dance moves with spins' or 'graceful dance moves' something along that line that makes it feel more 'real' and less like a 'slash command' as Sirii would say. Anyway, good ideas Deila.
This idea looks very good. Here are some suggestions:
- NPC actions. Other than cheering and becoming angry, how about some other indicators for NPC reaction? BAD - roll eyes, tap foot, check watch, snore, look bored, sit down, etc. GOOD - stand, cheer, dance, etc.
- Your clothes - should your attire fit the venue? I mean, if you're a woman and have an audience of xenophilic male perverts... On the other hand, if you're catering to some staunch old women, maybe something more conservative would be more appropriate.
- That being said, should there be different kinds of audiences? I don't recall seeing anything in the proposal that mentions it (and if it's already there, please excuse my ignorance). The audience composition should affect which dances and songs would be more favorable.
- The ASR "TI" System Add-On - Maybe on harder quests, the ASR display bar should be disabled, so that the entertainer must rely on the audience's responses?
Just the opinion of a lowly non-entertainer. Disregard or heed as you please.
= Andrew
Chilastra.Palacek
Message Edited by Jagii on 01-03-2005 07:13 PM
Xyrdre wrote:Still, mechanics such as referenced in the above paragraph make great sense for Dancers, whose flos are of differing durations and do not queue, but have little meaning for Musicians, whose flos are mostly fixed duration and can be queued. Whereas it would be very interesting to have differing styles and approaches to completing anything using the Quest mechanics as a Dancer or a Musician, would we ever be lucky enough to have the development time dedicated to rewriting the code not only once, but twice? On the other hand, if music flos were altered so that they did not queue, it could once again become a valid test of skill, though I have no idea how the Musician community would feel about such a change.
Noooooooooo.
That's how I feel
.
Aleyo wrote:
Xyrdre wrote:
Still, mechanics such as referenced in the above paragraph make great sense for Dancers, whose flos are of differing durations and do not queue, but have little meaning for Musicians, whose flos are mostly fixed duration and can be queued. Whereas it would be very interesting to have differing styles and approaches to completing anything using the Quest mechanics as a Dancer or a Musician, would we ever be lucky enough to have the development time dedicated to rewriting the code not only once, but twice? On the other hand, if music flos were altered so that they did not queue, it could once again become a valid test of skill, though I have no idea how the Musician community would feel about such a change.
Noooooooooo.
That's how I feel
/agree Without the queue, musicians would sound awful..regardless of talent or twitch skill..we are going to be very limited in how much we can compensate for latency. While we can do a lot to cover latency problems in dances (to a degree), it is easier to fool the eye than the ear.
I would just as much hate a queue for dance flos..we'd lose all ability to utilize flos to transition between dances.
Esharra wrote:
Aleyo wrote:
Xyrdre wrote:Still, mechanics such as referenced in the above paragraph make great sense for Dancers, whose flos are of differing durations and do not queue, but have little meaning for Musicians, whose flos are mostly fixed duration and can be queued. Whereas it would be very interesting to have differing styles and approaches to completing anything using the Quest mechanics as a Dancer or a Musician, would we ever be lucky enough to have the development time dedicated to rewriting the code not only once, but twice? On the other hand, if music flos were altered so that they did not queue, it could once again become a valid test of skill, though I have no idea how the Musician community would feel about such a change.
Noooooooooo.
That's how I feel/agree Without the queue, musicians would sound awful..regardless of talent or twitch skill..we are going to be very limited in how much we can compensate for latency. While we can do a lot to cover latency problems in dances (to a degree), it is easier to fool the eye than the ear.
I would just as much hate a queue for dance flos..we'd lose all ability to utilize flos to transition between dances.
Not to mention that while it's not necessarily actually wrong to go from an arbitrary point in the dance base to a dance flourish, it's definitely *wrong* to go from an arbitrary point in the music base to the music flourish, due to the relation of measures and such and the way the music code is available to us (changing the music so that it wouldn't necessarily be wrong to interrupt the music base would just about be giving us total freedom with music creation also, which we know won't happen).
Maisland wrote:
This would work if we didn't have to spam the flourishes but could do them at a reasonable rate and gauge the effects of each flourish/dance/song as we make the changes.
Good point. Actually, my proposal above seems pretty detailed at first, but does leave a lot of system-specifics yet to be determined. Which is a Good Thing (tm), as it allows for flexibility. One of those areas not detailed is in exactly how the system banks up positive or negative ASR. And I agree that it should not be dependent on spamming flos to rack up plusses as they're discovered.
In a perfect world, I'd like to see a system by which the timing of flourish transitions was the key to successful performance ratings. More akin to the way that some video golf games work, where you have to hit the command at a certain correct time for maximum effect. That 'certain correct time' in our case with dancing could be at the exact end of one flo animation to carry into another (solid flo stringing), or at the loop point of the base dance (smooth base - flourish transitions). The closer to that exact transfer point that the command was executed (smooth dance performance), the higher the score or effect. This, in my mind, would measure more of the skill of the Dancer player in using the tools we have at our disposal to create aesthetically pleasing performance, and therefore translate nicely into the purpose of the Quest mechanics - however they are utilized.
Yes... SWG has had twitch gaming all along, long before JTL,in the form of Dancers executing flourishes well.
Still, mechanics such asreferenced in the above paragraphmake great sense for Dancers, whose flos are of differing durations and do not queue, but have little meaning for Musicians, whose flos are mostly fixed duration and can be queued. Whereas it would be very interesting to have differing styles and approaches to completing anything using the Quest mechanics as a Dancer or a Musician, would we ever be lucky enough to have the development time dedicated to rewriting the code not only once, but twice? On the other hand, if music floswere altered so that theydid not queue, it could once again become a valid test of skill, though I have no ideahow the Musician community would feel about such a change.
But... all of that may be the stuff of yet another of my multi-page treatises on Dancer proposals.
CM_Ronin wrote:
They already have a GCW and PvP Ranknig system. Would be cool if similar tools were used for entertainers. Maybe even like Faction Points you could Get Prestige Points and gain new titles and possibly unlock secret new goodies.
