Development Cycle Archive
Thread: In-Concept 3: Entertainer, Dancer and Musician Missions & Quests
Actually you have a point there, Chasyork. Maybe there should be less of a group xp bonus? The bonus xp has the effect of causing overcrowding of a very few cantinas and and filling groups with AFK performers who actually have little interest in being grouped often to the detriment of those who want to be in a group for social reasons.
Perhaps the group bonus should only occur when, when using the same flourish and dance/song in a near simultaneous manner? This would reward those who are actually attending to their groups peformance and reduces the effectiveness of all but the most meticulousy written and timed AFK macros. Some slack(1 or 2 sec.) shoud be allowed in the timing for system lag.
I think we should be rewarded for being social and working together, but for most of the entertainers who relly want to be an entertainer xp really isn't what we are seeking. Cool interaction and creating an awesome looking/sounding performance are often more what is sought.I think a system rewarding coordinated performances would raise the bar for performances as a whole, since more entertainers would try to understand how to do so as they progress through their skills.
As to the proposal to have performing be more like crafting........Please don't.I understand how it would make crafting a routine more clear with a better interface, as opposed to using macro routines. ButI for one can not stand the crafting procedure ( which seem to serve the game well).i don't think the game needs to turn performers into one more class of crafter. I sort of like the fact that when you see a cool performance that you know the guy behind the keyboard did their homework, but this is probably kind of selfish and elitist of me. It would be nice for entertainers to have a product to sell, but maybe this could beimproved by giving instrument quality a value.
Dante' Skyline - Master Musician/ Aspiring Commando, Scylla
Agree, Dante'. Please do NOT turn entertainer professions into crafting professions. If you want to start a new crafting profession that specializes in entertainment type items fine, but don't make me, as a dancer, become a crafter.
I've done crafting, and I hated it. I want to dance, not craft. I also do not need the clunky crafting system in order to create new dances. I can do that just fine now, by combining dances (/changedance command), flourishes, and special effects.
If anything, give me new base dances and complete flourishes for all the existing dances! But we're not supposed to ask about that in this thread, so never mind. 
SakeO wrote:Actually you have a point there, Chasyork. Maybe there should be less of a group xp bonus? The bonus xp has the effect of causing overcrowding of a very few cantinas and and filling groups with AFK performers who actually have little interest in being grouped often to the detriment of those who want to be in a group for social reasons.
You know, I never thought about this before but why is it that max XP for an entertainment group is given by capping it at 20? This isn't true of any other profession in the game. Fighters don't get more XP, per se, in a larger group. In fact in large groups it's often harder to get good XP, even for powerful enemies, because you do a smaller and smaller fraction of the total damage to the beast. When hunting my friends and I have found that groups of 4-7 are ideal, 9 is pushing it, and anything in the double digits is just not workable. So most hunt groups I have been a part of are in the 4-8 player range.
When you think about it, not only don't you need a group of 20 entertainers to be good at performing, but in fact that large a group will hinder. Fundamentally, there are only a total of 5 unique "sounds" in music (with lots of instruments that are just re-hashes of other sounds) -- Slitherhorn, Fizzz, Ommni Box, Nalargon, and Mandoviolin. Ever listen to a band with multiple versions of the same instrument, say, 3 Fizzzes? It sounds almost exactly like there is just ONE Fizzz, especially if you synch and bandflourish. So there is little point to having more than 5 musicians in a band. It won't sound any better and it may sound worse. (And those 5 need to each be playing a different instrument or you don't even need that many.)
Likewise, I have yet to see the performance venue -- theaters, player cantinas, public cantinas, etc -- that can realistically hold more than 5 or so dancers without it looking too "crowded." If you get the musicians and dancers together then, I would think that an "ideal" performance group would be about 10 total members. Anything over that is going to get cluttered, and not add to the performance. In fact much more than that will almost certainly detract from it, even if they are bandflourishing -- because it is just too many people and gets to be too cluttered.
So here is my recommendation: do not make XP gain go up linearly (as it now does) with group size. Instead, make it go up unti you hit say, 8, then level out from say, 8-12, and then decrease rapidly as you get over 12 until at 20, you're making the same as you would solo -- or maybe even less than you did solo. Also with this you have to make the healing rate do the same... max out at 10, less for larger groups.
This would get rid of the "20 AFK musicians in a group" phenomenon because that would not be worth it. Groups would have to break up, spread out, and perhaps even go to other venues.
C
KombatCamKombat wrote:
I like the idea of Entertainers (Dancers and Musicians) to be able to play @ Jabba's Palace. But before they can they must complete a couple of missions for Jabba. I know most Entertainers don't have combat skills but this allows for great group interaction, (ie, The entertainers must group with combat professions to complete these tasks).
I guess my question here is what do the combat people get out of it? I can already find someone with a combat profession to basically do the missions for me as they are and let me tag along for the rewards. I just have to pay them enough. And the fact is that when quests are made no one ever thinks, "lets make these quests so that the combat people have to bring an entertainer along in order to finish the mission". I think that quest missions should be made so that there is a choice in how to complete them. You can kill some thugs, or you can do other things which are more suited to your skills. That way entertainers (and pure crafters too) are not just some useless baggage who has to bribe someone to do quests for them.
Kaim_Mytac wrote:
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
no flame... lots of us love that idea and want it.... here is a post I did a while back
I think it would help gig missions be fun and more useful then the 200cr they get now, encourage people to play atk, add more fun to solo missions and make people more reliant on cantina's and entertainers thus making them the hub again.
Make entertainer/ musician/ dancer missions (first scale by ability) be more quest like... In the quest fractions such as those to jaba would play a role... In the end you would be questing for knowlage that you can pass around the cantina. For instance, one of the things they are looking at for sumglers is the ability to actually smuggle.... well what if while that weary smugler was dusting off in the cantina, the lovely dancer or band leader lets them know not to use the starport they were going to because the imperial pressence is too strong, and if they went to X they have a better chance to succeed. Or for a BH we knew about one of there marks with slightly more acuracy then the spy net ops from what we had learned... Or for artisans that X vien of resources has just been found near X,y,Z. If this was done, then they would have a reason to come talk to the entertainers and if it required atk play, then afk'rs would be less prevelent. This also fits into the role that entertainres played in the sw universe. Cantina's while filled with vial scum and wreched villany, were spots that you could find "under the table help" it is true in all of lucas's games thus far. So my thought is don't just "fix" gig missions, do so in a method that adds content AND RP value to all of us. This would go great strides to fixingthe profession I belive as people would see the need for us, the cantina's would be more full and more full of atk players (so they could "distribute" their info). I also belive however, that if you are going to do this, that whispering should be targeted ie: "/whisper newjedi ok so i found that your target was last on rori, natarius" make the words fuzzy to everyone else so if it was about a resource vien, you wouldn't say it once and inform the whole server... I also free that specific loot given to us to give out or to tell where it is would be a good addition. Anything that would help customers pat themselves on the back for comming... after all that is one of the things people do when drunk
Dance for Jabba (make it a cantina for those who have done his dirty work.)
Current ones from the terminal seemed really vague, like for how long or where exactly...
why dont take what ddr did and make it more complicated
like it would say flourish 7.. 5 ....8...ect.
and still going along with teh jabbas palace idea of geting droped into the rancor pit
(i think a big crowd would form just to see if they would get droped)
BAHH! Jeez. Alright, I want everyone to do me a favor. Open up your Skills menu, look at the Entertainer tree, and tell me the two professions it leads to....
Wait, what's that? There's THREE professions! Doh! Image Designer.
I can't claim to know much about Dancer or Musician (I never got far in Dancer tree, and musician just... umm.. **EDIT**.
Okay, to try and keep this more mature... I personally don't prefer to play as a Musician, and I've found a few other professions I like a little more than Dancer.
Like ID. We are part of Entertainer too. We have and entire branch of Entertainer devoted to us, and Entertainer leads to our Elite Profession. Yet, we have NO type of terminal-made mission, we have NO practical buff or use, and we have NO extended building-related skills (Register location, can't place Cantina's or Theatre's.)
Please, as bad as the ID interface is I'm willing to use it to gain some more Creds. Those ID's who work on charge for service are fine, but not everyone feels it's right to DEMAND 1k for a haircut. I work for tips, not fees, and I suffer for it because I have no missions that take advantage of my skill.
It seems to me that it would be stunningly easy to make ID missions. I'm sure the devs have already discussed the request that comes up from time to time to have IDs be able to change the features of NPC merchants. If that can be coded in, then there's no reason not to expand that concept to the mission system. All that's required is a cute little backstory on the mission terminal ("Mrs. Q is worred about the wrinkles on her face, caused by years of exposure to the sun and Tatooinian sand storms", etc.), an NPC with the appropriate wrinkles can be spawned, and then the ID can have fun tinkering with the NPC's appearance, after which they recieve their reward. Heck, I'd even do that kind of thing for fun without a reward.