Dancer Archive

this is anotherpatch that makes me feel like the arts program is being run by the football coach

the effects are pretty and they should have been a really neat add-on to performing, but i'm really disappointed for three reasons:

1. you can't fit all 6 effects in a small, uncumbersome droid, they have to go in an R3... that's almost as big as i am and since most of our shows take place on cantina stages that were already designed by the football coach with no thought to actually fitting movements onto them, having effects in a huge honking droid instead of something small and discreet looking is awful... if they have to be in an R3, why couldn't we set it over in the corner and target the stage... you know... like real light and show effects instead of putting a huge droid front and centre in the act on an already oddly-shaped and too-small stage space or else having the odd visual effect of setting the attention-getting lights and flashes somewhere the performers are not

2. the format for effects is a damned looping macro... how well does that fit in artistically?... no flight of avians for punch onX line of lyrics, no cloud of fog for effect as you move into the chorus, no artistic control over it at all beyond preprogramming which effects you want and how large or small the loop is because you can't tell it to fire *now* you can only tell it to start running the loop from wherever it is in the loop

3. whether you go for a huge R3 so you can access all the effects or pick a couple of favorites and decide in advance how to pair them for all your songs so you can fit a few mice in your datapad and ignore the rest of the effects, you just added a performer who never shuts up to the troupe... the whole time they're out they're chirping and whirring and you can't turn it off

i don't even know what it was meant to fix, but now there's a delay for 10 or 15 seconds or however long when you /stopdance or /stopmusic... this means musicians can't change instruments during a song and it also means that when they're bugged they can't stop and restart to fix it unless they stand there gaping like fish for a nice long pause... hopefully there isn't amaster dancersprawled across the stage taking 10 seconds to recover from their 4th fall in a one-hour show at the same time or it might look kind of stupid (/sarcasm off)

i hate the 30-second buff because it looks butt ugly and it's contrary to the whole idea of performing and being entertaining, like afk performing, but it wasa pretty necessary evil since most players don't even bother trying to find a live master performer for buffs any more and they certainly don't want to spend 10-15 minutes of their play time getting a buff if they can work around without it by just using more chef foods... why not a game system where a master dancer (for example) can /setperf and do a full buff in 30 seconds to a minute using regular, unspammed, visually appealing dance moves... even if the performer then has to sit and recover for 5 minutes before they can buff again (i don't see the need, don't get me wrong, but i have no clue what the devs have against fast, easy performer buffs) this would be a better time drain than one that doesn't let the player back out the door since that just has the effect of making players not use performer buffs

argh... sorry, i guess it's just a rant day for me, but why can't additionsand changes be made with more sense of what would really work and be helpful? and especially why does it always feel like artistry is such a low, low priority?

On Tempest: Itte, Master Doctor & Teras Kasi Master

On Bloodfin: Ynn, Master Sword & Medic-ish Ranger-ish Side

On Eclipse: Anjh, Master Dancer & Master Musician
Very proud to be dancing with The Force!


The Force Band on Eclipse