Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Concept 3: Entertainer, Dancer and Musician Missions & Quests
i think it would be interessing if you could fix , once and for all ,the BH missions .....
why add new stuff, when you cant even fix what is already in game .....
Goldshadow wrote:
Poet -
I have to agree with everything that you said. You said it well and I can't think of anything that you left out. I do have one and ONLY one problem with your entire post. You are on the Intrepid server.A performer of your calibre should beon the Bria server instead.
ThunderHeart, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE listen to Poet, and if necessary, beat his message into the Development team.
NO!!! She's ours and YOU CAN'T HAVE HER!!! 
Signed,
A Sirii fan and someone LUCKY enough to perform with her regularly
Missions:
1. Gig Missions #1: The current entertainer gig missions are ok, they just need to have the pay scale with distance to the gig and level of the entertainer to make them worthwhile.
2. Gig Missions #2: Or you could modify the current entertainer missions so that locations that are currently under or unmanned pay much more and come up much more frequently on the terminal. This will hopefully encourage performers to go to some of the less populated cities. Mayors of player cities could pay a small fee to have their city included as an entertainer mission destination for a period of time (like a week or a month.)
3. Entertain an NPC: A mission would require you to either play or dance for an NPC. In essence they would work like the regular gig missions except that you have to be within a certain range of the NPC you're performing for, or you'd have to do a /setperform on the NPC for it to count. The NPC could occassionally ask for a specific song/instrument or dance. Following the NPC's request makes him happy and makes your mission go much faster. Ignoring the request makes the mission take longer. This would encourage at the keyboard play, but not heavily penalize someone for being AFK for a couple minutes.
4. Entertainer Exploration: Explorer style entertainer missions. It could be stuff like heal 500pts of battle fatigue, heal 20 people, or play for 20 minutes in every cantina on corellia.
Faction Missions:
Entertainer faction missions could be faction oriented variations of regular missions.
1 and 2. Gig Missions: Get a gig mission to play at the Imperial or Rebel Outposts.
3. Entertain an NPC: Entertain faction NPCs. The mission could have the player travelling out into the wilderness to provide entertainment for a hard working squad of rebels or stormtroopers. The faction NPCs could call out requests like regular NPC missions. One could even add an ellement of danger to these missions by giving the performer a TEF... they then run the risk of getting shot by overt members of the opposite faction.
4. Explorer style: Heal 20 overt members of your faction.Or heal overt faction members for a set amount of battle fatigue.
Quests:
Famous music and dance NPCs are the ideal people to hand out a quest and one of the load screens hinted at a good story. A load screen for tatooine talks about Max Rebo and how he's under a very exclusive contract with Jabba, and how he dare not upset Jabba. It's probably safe to assume that all of the permanent musicians and dancers in Jabba's court are under similar such exclusive contracts.
Musician Quest:
After some how gaining entrance to Jabba's throne room you talk to Max Rebo. He complains to you about the exclusive contract Jabba has forced him into and how he has a great many other things that he needs to do. Max then asks you to do some things for him since he's busy playing for Jabba. The missions you do for Max could be various gig, delivery, and escort missions. For example Max could have you play a gig that he was contracted to do, but can't make anymore. You could pick up Max's spare Nalargon from the instrument repair shop. A dancer that wants to try out for Jabba has gotten lost in the wilderness, you could escort her back to the palace. The individual mission rewards could be stuff like speakers, microphones, instruments (existing ones), and credits. The final quest reward could be a new instrument. (Hang on now, I know you said no new instruments, but hear me out....) The new insrtrument given could be some sort of stringed instrument, either a guitar, violin, or harp style body. It could use the exact same sound set as the mandoviol, it'd just have a different look. And it could be restricted to use by master musicians. That way musicians will have the mandoviol sound available to them without having to master entertainer, but it still leaves the mandoviol as unique to the master entertainers.
Dancer Quest:
Similar to the musician quest, except that you talk to Oola, the twilek dancing girl for your missions. Again, she could have you dance in her stead at a gig, maybe deliver a letter to her family letting them know she's ok for now, but she fears for her safety.... the usual assortment of delivery, gig, and escort missions. Rewards could include dancer clothing, jewelry, speakers, microphone, and credits. I have a couple ideas for the quest reward. Many dancers will hold swords and staffs while they dance as a prop, it looks interesting. Perhaps a quest reward would be some sort of special dancer's prop, like a flowing ribbons that twirl around as the dancer dances. Or, maybe the dancer could get ankle and wrist bracelets with bells on them. Moving while wearing them would make little jingly sounds, move more and the jingling increases. Or perhaps some unique uncraftable dancers outfit. HOWEVER, any wearable item recieved as a reward should be wearable by ALL species. It's depressing to do missions and recieve a hat or clothing as a reward when your character is a wookiee and can't wear it. Or you could make the reward species specific, you get a different reward depending on what species you are.
Entertainer Quest:
You could either have an entertainer quest in addition to the dance and music ones, or you could make one all encompassing entertainer quest that require the player to both play and dance. Missions would be like the dance and musician quests and rewards could be similar.If you do one all encompassing entertainer quest perhaps it could have several sections (kind of like the faction themeparks) where you keep getting sent on to the next NPC to do stuff for them.
Merging Two Great Ideas:
I love the idea I've heard of of healing a particular NPC and I love the idea of having to do particular dance steps. Why not make missions a game (with the intent of entertaining your target)?
Here's how it works:
You go in, start playing/dancing and the NPC starts watching/listening you (and your group).
You perform a flourish 4 and he groans (mental note: don't do that again).
You perform a flourish 6 and he claps!
It's all about entertainment. As you get more skilled, the patrons get more picky, have more mind wounds/battle fatigue, etc.
Also, as mentioned before, the advantage of having a real patron is you earn real experience (wound healing/battle fatigue healing) while doing your mission.
I agree 100% with Sirii (aka PoetDancer) and Dejah (aka Chessack). Yes, fix the entertainer quests so they pay more reasonably (at least cover the cost of tickets), maybe even add some of the creative enhancements suggested in this wonderful thread.
However, do not assume that fixing missions and quests for entertainers fixes all of our problems. Please address our other issues as well.
When its possible to record music an sold them to NPCs or other players :-) then a manager can be meaningfully. Else i think the agents are the better choice.
Why you not add job contracts ? Then i get the job to play every day at least 30 minutes at...Cantinas, Hotels,Theatres? The idea is Player Towns can Hire Entertainers over the agency, to fill up the Cantina. As Entertainer (for the doc are this meaningfully to) you can accept 5 or 6 Contracts, this means, you have to play one hour here one hour there, the angancy gives the money to the entertainers, and the other players pays the agency (exclusively the tip)
Entertainers role in the game =))
here are some ideas that I just like to get said =)
the Music and Dance prof needs improvment as well.. here are some ideas that probebly not will hapen but at least I have said them =))
Music/Dance
Make them like crafting systems with a tweak of ID.. meaning ..
make a compose window where u can use the already predefind flourishes to creat your own new melodys and dances and just as in ID u get more choices then the normal ones the better u become.. "not that it's like u can chose a song or dance when u creat your character" =)..
so in this compose windows u can chose and pick whatever flourishes u like and then make an entire new song.. u could also add some extra flourishes thats not withing the xisting songs.. and the higher lvl u get the more flourishes u can use in your composing.. then u could also decide what sound the different instrument would use in that particular song.. even here u could add some new sounds to some of the instruments. the compose window would probebly be a drag and drop window where the flourishes are like some sort of blueprint.. so u have 2 columes one where u decide what instrument to include in the song and one where u put rows of flourishes. on the instrument column u can decide what tune they use and in the flourish column u place the different flo to that specific instrument. This will probebly result in loads of crap music but also lots of good ones by the ppl who really enjoys this proffesion. what do I mean with the tune off an instrument.. well in different songs same instrument has different sounds .. and its those sounds that u should be able to set your self.. and even here u could add bonus material.
u could also make it so that the composing window could experiment with how much action each flourish should cost to make and instead of a crafting station entertainers could have studios that needs to be placed in a room or something... and the player cantinas should be able to have 2 posters on the outside and a few on the inside so u can make comercial about your giggs.. of course u could put fees on having a poster in those slots... the posters could also be a skill for a master Entertainer or music/dance.. that also needs a studio to be done =)))))
in the flourish window u must also have a tempo function.. where u set the tempo so all the flourishes u chose keeps the same tempo .. in that way they will all work to gether a bit better no matter wich ones u chose =)).. it would sound terrible if u had loads off different tempos =D
this will work without worrys for real life royalties and stuff caus u are just playing around with predefined flourishes madwe by u swg and I think this would really make a huge different about the entertainer proffession.
Here u also have the possibilitys to make it so that if u listen to an own composed song.. another player that is they had to pay a fee in order to take part of that service in the same way the access fee works on houses on houses.. same goes for dances... u cuold also make a royalty system so if ppl wanna play a song u have learned them and ppl pays that player to listen u get like 5% off its fees.. this is a try and an idea of how to make some more economics flowing for the entertainers.
Another thing that in my opinion is important is that u should add a silent flourish.. so u can pause your instrument in the song without having to stop and start the music.. that would increase the jam feeling abnormusly. Then u can also make a fill in skill.. just add it to the existing skill trees.. and when u start play u can chose if u either wanna playnormal or fill in music.... fill in music are mostly quiet and u throw in some touches and solos to the music.
and the own made songs/dances could contain 10 flourishes at master title.. and u get more flourishes then u alerady have with the songs today in all the songs that is ..
skip the mission terminals completely for entertainers =D
and make agencys offices in theaters and hotels.. let us belong to different stables where the entertainers for the same agency can effect the worth of their "missions".. in other words lets say we have an agency where 5 entertainer has signed up.. depending on how many and how well they preform their missions the better that agency become to work for and the higher the pay offs per gigg will be. So these entertainers has to come up with showcases to sell thrue the agency and to take their job seriusly..
depending on how well the entertainer also affects the status off the agency.. now here is lots off things to do with it but agencys would be more apropriat then blody machines and I belive that there is lots off potential in it as well for other ideas to take growth from this.. u could probebly have differences on the agencys regarding what faction u have and also an agency could give some bonuses to the entertainer in stats or anything.. and depending on what kind of agency u chose u get different bonuses.. u could have scum agencys that probebly treats u bad and pay off bad but gives u bonuses in enhancement.. these are just brief ideas but worth building on..
with the Agencys u also have the possibility to give meaning to upkeep the master title in any of the proffs and to give it content.. in the begining the noermal entertainers could get focked and mostly fail these .. so they need to use the cantinas where they should be.. but then u slowely work your self up and finaly get inte to an agency.. the agencys compete with other agencys and the better u get till u reach master the more u need to do to remain in one.. and the longer u remain the more benefits u get from them... and when u reach master title in either music or dance u can actually start benefitting from them for real.. and get acces to good things that u dont have till that.. here there is plenty of things to fill with content for the ones that already are master title in either music or dance and if this is combine with my other idea with the composing and also the other entertainer profs this gives splended of content or at least great possibilitys to make that..
eventually u could perhaps start an own agency when u reached enough goals as master entertainer in your own player city.. but just the fact that u should focus on letting entertainer be entertainer and use their world to play in caus face facts.. u didnt make chefs creating killer tomatos and evil flying meatballs only they can have as pets when fighting... guess why... cheffs dont do that.. cheffs makes food.. architect makes furniture and nott killer chairs.. uhm well maybe electrical ones though.. my point is.. we have an "in my opinion" extream great base as entertainer here.. u made it to be just that.. entertainers.. now continue with the same concept and start giving us the rest of our world..
I like the ideas of the buffs and its great that they have been made better .. thats good .. and I love the streat performing theam ideas.. look at the music and dance bussiness of today and see whats there bring your ideas from there rather then eq and daoc witch havnt even comed close to having a musician as actually a musician or dancer as dancer.. let these profs be what they aer but now when u have all the things in place go deeper in it.. enlarge it for us.. we dont belong on the batlefield more then cheffs do but we have a great and rough world that is missing here.
Ok...don't flame me for jumping into the Entertainer issue, but as a Master Bounty Hunter, I think it would be great if Dancers/Musicians could play some type of Spy Informant. This would be something that would be an great addition to a PC Bounty system (if one is ever created). Somehow, the Entertainer could be integrated into the BH cash payout reward if the entertainer has somehow helped the BH run down their Mark.
I know this sounds wishy-washy...but I'm just playing with this idea 'cause it sounds interesting. I think it would do SWG a whole lot of good if the Entertainers could take on a more proactive role in the GCW, and actingin the capcity ofsome sort of SpyNet / Informant would be the perfect fit for them 
So, why do entertainers NOT take missions?
1) They're often lower-paying than the trip ticket there
2) There are rarely players there needing mind healing / battle fatigue (everyone knows that you have to travel to the clustering sites to get an entertainer)
3) They're more interested in chasing the XP than the cash. Unless you need new costumes, a dancer's expenses are lighter than most others.
My goals would be to encourage a re-distibution of dancers around the various cantinas by:
1) Increasing "gig" payment, but also gig duration.
2) Including questlike gigs that culminate inthe discovery of new dances / flourishes / tunes in.
3) Include NPC "audiences" that would give a small amount of entertainer healing XP... perhaps 1/4 that of regular audiences. (Just enough to encourage XP-chasers to take them)
4) Reduce the bonus to XP we get for being in groups. While I like bands, right now, there's a need for re-distributing dancers to all the empty cantinas out there.
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