Entertainer Archive
Thread: Another idea for entertainers
First let me preface this by saying my ideas are mostly just brainstorms. I post them before fully thinking them out, in an attempt to develop an idea in a bazaar style setting - by presenting the partial idea and seeing if others have ideas for filling it out, or possibly getting inspirations from others comments to reform it into something more complete.
I've done quite a few mechanics based posts in the past couple days. I do this because it's part of my personality - figure out how things work. I'm sure eventually I'll spend some time to figure out exactly how music and dance xp relates to how many people are watching/listening and how many are performing with you. But don't get me wrong, I love the entertaining aspects. In fact, a good portion of my entertainment is with no intention of healing. I'vedanced or played music atballs, weddings, romantic dinners, fashion shows, night clubs, gunpoint, formal occasions, private parties, and more I'm sure I'm forgetting. So this next idea is related to that.
Though I will start with a little bit of mechanics. We have two branches dedicated to healing. The entertainer tree itself has one dedicated to healing, but it focuses on wound healing. What about completely striking wound healing from the elite professions, and moving all of it to entertainer, while leaving battle fatigue the speciality of the elite professions. (Kind of like how medics focus on damage and doctors on wounds) Or at least moving most of it to the novice professions, while maybe leaving some in the elite profession.
The Idea
To what ends? Why, a new type of branch of course. First, strike choreographer from the dancer knowledge line. The new line I have in minds would be choreography for dancers, conductor for musicians. This like would ideally use a new type of xp (Though I can't think of any precedent in the game for a profession with 3 types of xp in one skill tree) though I don't think it would necessarily be harmed by using dance/music xp. In fact, I can think of plusses and minuses for both sides, and the more I think about it the more I sway myself towards it using dance/music xp. (And perhaps putting the technique line on healing xp, since buffs are healing skills, and moving instrument shematics to the conductor or knowledge line.)
The Skill Boxes
Now what would the skill tree look like? Well...
Novice Dancer:
choreography + 5
max number of dancers + 1
Novice Musician:
conducting + 5
max number of musicians + 1
A novice is able to lead one other person doing the same song/dance as them and doing the same dance step as them, kind of like bandflourishes do now.
Choreography I:
choreography + 10
max number of dancers + 1
Conducting I:
conducting + 10
max number of musicians + 1
At the first skill box, they now have the ability to lead two others. In addition, they gain the ability to change music or dances any number of times during the performance. The choreographer also grants a smallreduction to the crit fail rate of the dancers involved.
Choreography II:
choreography + 10
max number of dancers + 1
Conducting II:
conducting+ 10
max number of musicians + 1
At the second skill box, they can lead 3 others. In addition they can add tech effects to the performance.
Choreography III:
choreography + 10
max number of dancers + 1
Conducting III:
conducting + 10
max number of musicians + 1
At the third skill box, they can now lead 4 others. In addition, now they can supply individual flourishes to each performer, instead of all having to do the same flourishes, if they want to. Dancers also get a further reduction in the crit fail rate.
Choreography IV:
choreography + 10
max number of dancers + 1
Conducting IV:
conducting + 10
max number of musicians + 1
At the fourth skill level, the choreographer can lead dancers in multiple dances at once (IE 2 doing poplock, 3 doing footloose) and the musician can add pauses (The /pausemusic style) in addition to the flourishes.
Master Dancer:
choreography + 15
max number of dancers + 1
Master Musician
conducting + 15
max number of musicians + 1
At the master level, they can now lead 6 others. Perhaps some extra skill as well, like staggerred starting/stopping, and for musicians, stopping with or without the leadout, maybe even starting without lead-in. (There are plenty of songs that just start with a beat, then add instruments on top of that, for example, without leading the beat in) And dancers should be able to grant a near perfect performance to even the most novice dancer.
BUT WAIT! There's more!
At the master entertainer level, the entertainer has the ability to coordinate the start of a combined choreography and conducting, perhaps even multiple choreographers/conductors at once, so they can combine their skills into larger performances. Perhaps even add the ability to assign a lead singer to sing lyrics you supply.
The Interface
How would this all work? Well, there would be two steps. One is creating the performance, the other is actually performing it. They don't have to happen at the same time either. First I'll cover the creating performance interface.
Creating a performance
The creation window would allow you to name the performance. It would then have a row for each performer you are allowed. You can also name the rows.
If you are level III or higher, each row would have two sub-rows. If you are level II, there would be 2 rows for the performance not connected to the named slots, since you can't direct individual performances at that point. If you are level I or novice, there would be just one row, since you can't do tech effects either.
The rows to the right would be the flourish row (Top row of each pair or only row if I or novice) and the effects row (Bottom row of each pair). This would also include the length of the flourish in the window, so you can stack dancer flourishes back to back if you want. Musicians would have the flourishes "snap" to the positions allowed in the song, while dancers could slide them around if they wanted, without overlapping of course.
Song or dance changes wouldn't have their own row, but would be marks in the performance, maybe by a little arrow pointing down above the row. (For dancers with individual changes and a choreographer withChoreography IV or better) or across the top (For musicians and dancers with group changes)
Pauses for music would be selected like a flourish, as a special paused flourish.
Effects would be done similar to flourishes, except they would be free sliding like dancer flourishes. They would also show the length, to allow for back to back effects, and no overlap allowed.
Performing
Now to the performance. This is much simpler. The choreographer or conductor would bring up the perform window. There, a row is listed for each performer they are allowed, as well as one for themselves. Each row would have two columns. On the left, they can select the name of one of their group members to perform with them. On the right, they can select the role that member will be performing. The roles are the names given to the columns in the create window. They don't have to fill all the rows with performers, and don't need performers on all the roles. They can also double up performers on the same role. So say there is a conductor with4 rolesnamed bass, horns, narlagonand mando. Now they don't have a mando or narlagon player, but they have someone on a chid, someone on a traz, and someone on the ommni box. They would select the chid person and give them the horn role, as well as the traz person, but the ommni box person would get the bass role. Notice that they are granted 4 performers (As indicated by the 4 roles) but only have 3 assigned to 2 roles.
Once they have everyone ready, they click the prepare button. Each of the performers then gets a window telling them the name of the performance, and asking them if they agree to joining it. They can then click yes or no. The conductor or choreographer can click the start button to begin at any time, but those who haven't agreed yet will not be part of the performance. The choreographer or conductor will also have a "start on cue" button which won't do anything immediately, but will wait for the signal to start.
Someone who is ME will be granted the ability /StartPerformance which gives all performances pending a "start on cue" in the group the start signal.
Mechanics
Okay I will touch briefly on the mechanics. Why would someone want to do this? Well I'd do it just because it's cool, but that's not always good enough for some, especially something that would take a bit of implementation work like this. If it were it's own type of xp, people would have to do it to master musician/dancer. If it is just music/dance xp, then they could just use the extra xp after reaching knowledge IV and tech IV to get it.
It should give experience weather or not it is it's own tree. The person doing it should get experience at least. Those being directed by the performance will at least get xp for performing. (Even though they don't have to actually do the flourishes by hand, unlike bandflourish, they have to actively consent to it, so the reason bandflourish doesn't give xp won't apply.) Possibly a little extra boost to xp for them too, to encourage them to join performances.
Okay, that helps those in that class, but this is a social game, what about helping others? Well, a performance could heal faster than normal entertainment, or it could give a better buff, or both. Or maybe some other benefeit not related directly to healing or buffing.
Other Ideas
Well one other idea might be for a ME to gain additional ability to choreographer and conductor that granted them the ability to do a performance with both on their own, perhaps even having people switching from music to dancing.
Maybe at master level of choreographer and musician grant additional flourishes, or give musicians the ability to select the movement flourish independant of the music flourish.
What level songs or dances? Obviously it shouldn't be above the level of the choreographer/conductor. How could they direct others in a dance or song they don't know? The performers should also be able to perform allthe dances of a role to be able to be selected for a role.
Length? Something I didn't touch on at all. What is a good length? The answer is good question. Maybe have it dependant on skill, starting at 1 minute going up to 5 minutes?
I did briefly mention song lyrics. I'm still not sure one way or the other on that. I'm actually almost tempted to say no to make it a perk of being a master entertainer.. You can then make a macro that cues the performance then has the song lyrics in it, whereas others have to try and synchronize them manually.
Additional action used by the conductor/choreographer? Or maybe using mind in addition to action. This could also be a limiting factor in length.
There is some technical nitty gritty as well.. Like if the performances are stored client side like a macro or server side as something on the datapad. Either way, the datapad item could be dragged to the hotbutton bar or the performance would appear in the ctrl-a actions window under it's own tab. Then it could be triggered with a hotbutton press.
If the performances are on the datapad, they could easily be traded, sold, etc. Maybe with limited performing rights. Perhaps have a created performance have limitedperforming rights to begin with, to keep the number collected down.
Anyway, that's my idea. Thoughts?
Tiaga wrote:
(Though I can't think of any precedent in the game for a profession with 3 types of xp in one skill tree)
Basic scout has 3 types of XP. Scouting, trapping & survival. Just FYI
choreography + 15
max number of dancers + 1
Master Musician
conducting + 15
max number of musicians + 1
At the master level, they can now lead 6 others.
Haven't read whole post so you might have answered my question already (just to much for my brain to read this morning) but my question is this. A group/band can hold 20 members so with a Master Musician or Dancer can only choreograph 6 people. That would mean you would need up to 4 masters working together for a band of 20 members to be insync. When it would probably work better if at master lvl the musician could control everyone in the band who is a musician and the dancer everyone who is a dancer that way you only have 2 choreographers working together to put on a great show.
Wow, a lot to read and a lot of details to worry about, but all in all a great idea !
Sorry for the long post.. Sometimes I get going and can't stop.
As to controlling a whole group... It was intentional that a master could not control a whole group. If you want that many people performing together, you'd need 3 masters (It's 6 others, so that means 7 people total per master) and a master entertainer or just quick reflexes to synchronize all of them
However, in my experience, prepared performances of groups that large rarely happen. More common is 3-6 dancers with 3-6 musicians. Of course if it were made easier, that might change. Right now doing all this stuff is fairly difficult to do and requires everyone to have quick reflexes, be paying attention, and have rehearsed. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but even in the troupe of entertainers I'm in, we occasionally come across something that looks impressive but is just terribly difficult to do, so we don't do it often.
Tiaga wrote:
Right now doing all this stuff is fairly difficult to do and requires everyone to have quick reflexes, be paying attention, and have rehearsed.
Interesting ideas. I highlighted the quote above because it is essentially how Holocron wanted the entertainment game to be played. That's why thy removed XP from bandflourishes. The devs prefer the idea that bands would be groups of dedicated performers who rehearsed their shows rather than having one person lead while the rest essentially sat back on autopilot.
The only real downside I see to this idea is that it's basically bandflourish on steroids. Since the devs have already come down on the side of preferring to discourage bandflourish I'm not optimistic about the chances of them wanting to devote entire skill trees to a similar ability.
SlickRiptide wrote:
Interesting ideas. I highlighted the quote above because it is essentially how Holocron wanted the entertainment game to be played. That's why thy removed XP from bandflourishes. The devs prefer the idea that bands would be groups of dedicated performers who rehearsed their shows rather than having one person lead while the rest essentially sat back on autopilot.
The only real downside I see to this idea is that it's basically bandflourish on steroids. Since the devs have already come down on the side of preferring to discourage bandflourish I'm not optimistic about the chances of them wanting to devote entire skill trees to a similar ability.
Don't get me wrong Slick... In a way it is nice having a separation between those who go the extra mile and make a real performance and those who just have a macro. But I don't think this would take away from that. This would only add to that. And the above person is right, sometimes lag can make the difference between everyone being perfectly in sync, and someone being a bit behind. And that difference stands out when everyone is normally perfectly in sync.
I am part of a group that has taken dancing further than most. I don't even think I've ever heard anyone even mention some of the stuff we do. We've had people who chose dancing as one of their main professions come to a few of our practices, and decide not to join us because it's just too much for them. It's actually been a problem replacing people as we lose dancers.
Here's some of the things we do on a regular basis above and beyond the usual stuff..
- Synchronized dance changes, lighting effects
- Very tight formation lyrical (Anyone who knows lyrical knows why this is so hard)
- Cascaded dance changes, flourishes, lighting effects.. (IE a row of people and someone does a flourish followed by a dance change, then the next person does the same thing a few moments later, and so on)
- Alternating rows that dance in synch then break out and dance out of synch (Alternating, cascading, etc) either just different timed flourishes or different dances
- Weapon "duel" dances.. IE not just equipping a weapon, but actually positioning the dancers in such a way as it actually looks like a dance made to immitate a duel.
That is just brushing the surface of some of the things we've tried. Notice how all of those are dance related. Part of that is because however hard it is to find dancers willing to go above and beyond, it's even harder just to find musicians. The other part is we just haven't found as much for musicians to do. We have tried... But most of it is just bandflourishes to specific instruments, and having people do /pausemusic at the right time. Maybe some effects. But doing the instrument bandflourishes is impractical to do "live" and unwieldy to do in a macro. Fortunately music is much more forgiving than dances. Aside from the pauses, lighting effects and unflourished playing, you can just have one person set a macro to do bandflourishes and stack them up so the others will play them.
If we had something like this to work with, would we just use it and call it done? No! We'd still figure out what we can do, then push further. This still leaves a lot of room for creativity within the bounds of the mechanics, and plenty of room to push past those bounds. Furthermore, I think this would open some people up to being more creative. It would encourage them to do some of the things they gain as they progress through this skill tree. It would reveal to them that there is something more interesting to dancing and music than doing exotic while someone plays whatever on the ommni box, with the occasional random light show thrown in.
I'll also add (very quietly, since every time I point this out someone discounts the whole thing I say) that if it is given it's own xp type, it can be tuned such that being AFK gives no benefeit over being ATK, and that if someone was AFK for all of their career, they will still need to be ATK for this branch, which could be tuned to take about as long as all 3 other branches.
On the other hand, giving it it's own xp would turn entertainer groups into "Hey, if you dance for my performance, I'll dance for yours" and just casual entertaining would suffer.
SlickRiptide wrote:
The devs prefer the idea that bands would be groups of dedicated performers who rehearsed their shows rather than having one person lead while the rest essentially sat back on autopilot.
The devs apparently think we all play on T1s with SofTA machines. Trying to co-ordinate with other entertainers is fine, in theory...but in practice, lag due to large numbers of other players (audiences and ourfellow performers) makes it extremely difficult to actually pull it off. I play on a machine that technically is below spec...but I only have a problem when I'm in a horde of other players. (Yes, I have all the graphical goodies turned off/down.)
In response to Tiaga's original idea...I like it! I don't know how intimately familiar you are with Music, Tiaga, but there's already a system for assigning individual flourishes in /bandflourish by specifying the instrument. For musicians it's /bandflourish 4 mandoviol;/bandflourish 4 bandfill if you wanted to have just the mandoviol and bandfill players flourish, keeping the horns and narlagon (and ommni box) playing the basic loop. About the only thing musicians lack is /bandpause, e.g. /bandpause fanfar, to pause everyone or to specifically pause the fanfar. Or is there a band equivalent to /pausemusic that I don't know?
To combat some of the assumed objections of the developers to these ideas...how about creating dance troupe commands that mimic musical /bandflourishes? Instead of Dancers using /bandflourish, why not /troupeflourish? I have to say this has always been one of those niggling little things that's chapped my bum about band flourishes...dancers aren't part of the band. They're a dance troupe. We're all a performing ensemble, but inherent in the word 'band' is an implication that you're playing music, in my never-humble opinion.Dancers also don't have to dance the same dance, like musicians have to play the same song (and thank goddess for that! I remember what a cacophany it used to be). Not that I'm suggesting they should have to...though in some spiteful little way I'd like to inflict on dancers the annoyance I, as a musician, am subjected to by having to cater to the lowest common denomenator. But I don't think that'd ever happen, nor is it needed in the way that it is for music. But couldn't there be a /troupeflourish 5 rhythmic2 that would make everyone doing rhythmic2 perform that flourish? I guess considering the dance style the Dancer's instrument, and all dancers to be performing the same 'song,' after a fashion. That would even be cool for the higher level Dancers who have the various versions of Exotic...they could look like they're doing the same dance, but do different flourishes.
Tiaga's not the only long-winded one. 
I'll shut up now. But this is something I was sort of kicking around internally the other night after a performance in Vagabond's Rest.
the conductor idea has been brought up a number of time, along with the composer idea.
newjedi, i think being able to call band "pets" performers would be kinda fun, esp if i am alone sometimes and have no one to play with.