Entertainer Archive
Thread: For Discussion Chapter 2: What would make being an entertainer more interesting?
i dunno, i just don't want us to get caught up on tweaks to current systems that aren't even broken, and miss out on opportunities for more important changes
Okay, my Flouish system (which I wasn't clear on).
I think that at Novice Entertainer, you could only get two flourishes and your normal two dances. Then, dancing would give you a certain amount of xp (like, 5xp per tick or something really low). Now, to get big xp, you'd have to do 'Combos.'
For example, during Basic you could do a 3 chain combo. Basic 2 would give the ability to do 4 chain combos, Lyrical 5 chain, etc. To start a combo, you simply do one of the flourishes available to you. Then, the game would randomly pick one of your know flourishes to prompt you with. If you queue that flourish before the current one ends, you successfully continue the combo. For every flourish in the combo, you get the normal 5xp plus an xp bonus dependent on the flourish used and how far along it is in the chain. After completing the combo, you get another xp bonus. Also, doing combos would be Mind based, not Action.
This would do several things:
[*] Allow missions that grant new flourishs (like schematics) that would add variety and more xp to combos.
[*] Give AFKers some xp, but not NEARLY enough as active players (and that's all AFKers want I think).
[*] Add active content to Entertainers instead of the passive 'content' we have now. Simply letting a macro run while we chat isn't really gameplay in my opinion even though we have fun doing it.
Right now, there is almost NO gameplay for entertainers. It's a profession based on player-to-player interaction without regard to the character (there's no difference between a dancing Novice Ent and a Master Dancer except the look of the dance. I think the speed of the heal works AGAINST the entertainer since we should keep them in the Cantina, not hurry them out).
A flourish system like this would fix some of that I think. And I would compare it most to the Bust-A-Groove games, but without the required speed/reaction skills. Queuing up the next flourish would be easy for any active entertainer and they could still chat while doing combos if need be.
Also, the combos would drain a lot of mind to keep them from being used all the time. Maybe having a forced wait period of a tick or two between combos plus high mind cost.
This way, dancers/musician could actually compete and have shows and whatnot. What does everyone think?
On a side note:
bawler14 wrote:
Reason other professions Master first tier along with second tier professions:
Master Artisan: Crafting and Expirementing bonuses + vehicles
Actually, there are no bonuses in Master Artisan. Before Vehicles, they could only make sub-components to a handfull of items in other professions (PSGs, Crafting Stations, etc). I think Master Artisan needs a revamp too, but that's off subject!
Okay, how about this? Only a doctor can administer buffs, so it seems only natural than an entertainer can administer "prepackaged" buffs, and only in a cantina or entertainment venue, perhaps even while they are performing. While I admit it would do nothing to encourage the viewing of live entertainment, it would do a lot to help in the respectability department, as we would be better able to give the combats what they want without a lot of hassle. Would it be as good as a "standard" buff under the rules in place? Maybe not. I'm just scrambling for something that we as entertainers can do outside the context of BF and Wound Healing, and, make us viable economic professions at the same time.
So if 1 person listens to you play for 5 minutes, you get 100 fame points. If two people listen to you play for 5 minutes, you get 110 fame points, and so on - it multiplies by quantity. Exclude band members for fairness' sake. Partial credit like Survival XP and Scout camps. Put in caps based on the techniques line levels, so that mastery is encouraged.
If you have a high fame rating, travel is cheaper. I mean, after all, the Emperor and Mon Mothma both want to see a lot of USO shows. You can get the ability to reserve NPC cantinas for a band, advertise like Merchant Advertising for shows, etc.
- J
Some of them instead of focusing on adding more interesting things seem to be focusing on taking away from things.
Also, I would like to state that I am a firm believer in dealing with the cause, not the symptom. Therefore, anything that has to make a distinction between AFK and ATK entertainers is not a good idea, as it's dealing with the symptom. Better would be to deal with the problem - in this case hologrinders and lack of entertainer content. On the former, that is something pretty much all the correspondents are pushing for a fix to. On the later, I'm sure I have the support of Ravenmist and NewJedi on that one, as they both recognize it as an issue. That is what I'm trying to tackle here. I think we're making some very good progress in ideas.
* First, the cantina groove should be reversed. Instead of making it a bludgeon, make it an incentive. Thus, the longer a cantina goes without entertainment, the more experience and impact you get for playing there. If I as a performer really like playing in Bestine, I shouldn't be forced to go to Anchorhead just to be effective. But a musician who does go to Anchorhead when there hasn't been someone there for a while deserves a reward.
This, by the way, would also encourage AFK macroers to spread out more. Better rewards in distant places, and all that...
* Second, things like elite-class changes might not mean much to you, but things like being able to customize our cantinas more make a lot of difference to some of us. Right now the only real perk to being a Elite-Mastered Entertainer is to have your own cantina or theater - the development team should be going out of their way to ensure that we can give such places our own unique touches to make them more socially-interesting places. Lighting intensity is easy to do(it's done all over the game environmentals), but can yield a disproportionately large positive impact for us.
* Third, you really need to push band/troupe controls more. As you well know, the way flourishes are done can make a big difference to the sound of a band, or the appearance of a dance troupe. We should be able to issue group commands to different elements of a entertainer group to achieve complex results. For example, a band could do:
/musicgroupflourish 1 0 0 3 4 2 0
This would take the nalargons and do flourish 1, traz'es and bandfills don't flourish, kloo horns do flourish 3, fanfars do flourish 4, fizzes do flourish 2, and slitherhorns don't flourish. This is just like bandflourish, but instrument-differentiated.
Tag a command like that into a macro and we could get some truly complex composed music for relatively cheap implementation effort. Again, compared to the work a disproportionately large positive impact.
* Fourth, you need to get them to restore XP for bandflourishes, because it's not harming the AFKers but is harming the ability for the real entertainers to perform music well.
Not trying to tell you how to be our correspondent, but I would prefer it if we asked for the easily implemented but highly positive things first, and stalled the extremely difficult things for later. We could then see an immediate improvement in quality, rather than having to wait endless months for the little things...
Things I'd like to see, Tiaga:
1) An improved registration/search method. Basically, I want to be able to declare myself as being "at the keyboard" and run a search to find others who are at the keyboard. I put this in the other post, but something linked to cantina registration would be ideal. The default setting would have to be "afk," of course, or you'd simply get a lot of people who were mislabeled. Anyway, now that the afkers outnumber the socializers, we need a much better way of finding one another for pickup groups. Scouring the entire galaxyfor hoursin search ofa cantina withactive peersin it just isn't acceptable.
People (not just entertainers) could then run a search to find out who the afkers are and where they're located throughout the galaxy. Likewise, atk players could be easily found listed with name and location. Some people prefer afkers, some don't. The ability tofind the type of entertainer you preferwould help bring people together who share similar mindsets. There's already a search function in the game, so tying it to afk/atk registered entertainers would be a logical extension that's sorely needed.
2) Unique cantina architecture. Given the amount of time we spend in cantinas as a professions, be they NPC or player-owned, it would really go a long way if each cantina had a somewhat unique floorplan and ambience. Someone mentioned the ability to add variable lighting levels, which is a great idea. At present, however, if you've seen one cantina, you've seen them all. While player cantinas can have some varied decor, they're still remarkably similar. Diversity is good. Let's see some NPC cantinas with stages of various sizes, larger and smaller open areas based on city size, varied themes, etc., etc.
3) Improved entertainer missions. This has been covered pretty extensively, but I'd basically like an improved credit reward in addition to an alternate source of obtaining both healing and dance/music experience. Perhaps there could even be an image design variation that would send you to various places to give makeovers to mobs for cash and experience.
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Those three items would dramatically improve my gameplay without ever removing the ability to afk macro from our profession. That's no small thing. They provide a partial solution for the afking problem in two parts: 1) the search function helps you find people who are active, and 2) the improved missions give you something active (if not exactly social) to do when there are noatk people to be found. The diverse cantina architecture would just be a lovely perk. I get so tired of looking at the same interior day after day after day. I'll post more ideas as they come to me.
Cheers.
Salahsur wrote:
Tiaga, couple of points...
* First, the cantina groove should be reversed. Instead of making it a bludgeon, make it an incentive. Thus, the longer a cantina goes without entertainment, the more experience and impact you get for playing there. If I as a performer really like playing in Bestine, I shouldn't be forced to go to Anchorhead just to be effective. But a musician who does go to Anchorhead when there hasn't been someone there for a while deserves a reward.
This, by the way, would also encourage AFK macroers to spread out more. Better rewards in distant places, and all that...
Well there are a few other issues in play there, but I won't go into detail at this point.
* Second, things like elite-class changes might not mean much to you, but things like being able to customize our cantinas more make a lot of difference to some of us. Right now the only real perk to being a Elite-Mastered Entertainer is to have your own cantina or theater - the development team should be going out of their way to ensure that we can give such places our own unique touches to make them more socially-interesting places. Lighting intensity is easy to do(it's done all over the game environmentals), but can yield a disproportionately large positive impact for us.
I am a master dancer, and have been master musician and ID. I also have my own cantina, which I took great pleasure in decorating. I agree that more options would be nice, but I'm not really sure what you are looking for here.
* Third, you really need to push band/troupe controls more. As you well know, the way flourishes are done can make a big difference to the sound of a band, or the appearance of a dance troupe. We should be able to issue group commands to different elements of a entertainer group to achieve complex results. For example, a band could do:
/musicgroupflourish 1 0 0 3 4 2 0
What about something like:
/bandflourish 1 nalargon;/bandflourish 3 kloo horn;/bandflourish 4 fanfar;/bandflourish 2 fizz
Or possibly abbreviating it...
/b 1 n;/b 3 k;/b 4 fa;/b 2 fi
Try it. It works. Only thing you can't do is do a band pausemusic.
[... Other stuff ...]
Myplacehere as correspondentis to represent what the community wants... By that very nature, you need to tell me how to do it, so I am glad you feel you can speak up if you don't agree with what I'm doing, or think I should be doing more.
I did have plans to start collecting some short termchances people would like to see. In fact, I had plans to start doing that today. It will give me a chance to organize these ideas into something for discussion.
And a pause or omit command would be pretty sweet. Something where you can fade in and out by instrument...
Other than that, mostly I want my own cantina to be better. I hate the NPC ones now, but I can't compete because my cantina, despite its location, looks exactly like any other for atmosphere. There's no way to really create a unique character to pull people...
I used to be concerned about exact timing. I've never really had a problem with it in themusic I've done, which do a targetted bandflourish for every single instrument. (I have to switch away from spatial if I want to read anything but constant scrolling) Queueing up flourishes just garuntees they will be played together
However.... My roommate recenty started playing, and I was horrified to hear the music from both computers. It would drift out of sync until a point where they weren't even playing the same flourishes. I don't know if that's a game issue or a driver issue, but it was very annoying.
Tiaga, any thoughts on that flourish system that I fleshed out a little bit?
My true goal is to have some actual [1] gameplay, [2] content, [3] way to make entertainers different from each other. Right now, there is no gameplay, no content, and all entertainers are the exact same (especially in the eyes of those being 'entertained').
Anyway, fire at will 