CUEmu - Thread Posts

Petron

Sat Oct 09, 2004 8:35 pm

There is a relatively simple path that can be taken to breathe fresh life into the entertainment classes, and oddly the process involves making them a little more like the mele classes than they currently are.

At the moment, every class gets abilities as they gain boxes.If you are learning TKA, you're gaining lots of new moves, just like someone working to Dance Master. The TKA has all kinds of combinations that he can use in all kinds of practical situations. The dancer very likely only wants to dance her most recent dance unless she is perhaps roleplaying, in which case she is only dancing for effect anyway.

The TKA can also travel a variety of worlds and pit their various skills against NPCs of different characteristics, requiring different applications of his skill tree. The dancer and musician classes don't have such potental.

The world of the entertainer is inhabbited by a rich population of non-com NPCs, and this is where the opportunity to align the content possibilities of the entertainment classes with those of the mele classes presents itself.

Presumably these NPCs have HAM attributes that cannot be accessed through mele? So let them be accessed through Entertainment, this provides a medium for introducing the combination content that mele classes enjoy and entertainment classes don't. Let me go on to propose what we use these HAMs for.

We introduce a new system of mission, where the entertainer is tasked with drawing "clues", "rumors" or "gossip" - nothing more complex than snippets of tokenized storyline that the entertain gathers either from the mission destination or by visiting the venues of a particular npc faction on a planet, or particular cantinas. Variety would be nice, but whatever is implementable is better

The Entertainer arrives at a venue and locates NPCs that are "candidates" for her mission target. She elects to entertain them. She then plays out a process somewhat similar to combat: he objective is to lower the NPCs guard, so that the NPC will then possibly "reveal" something. Most of these revelations will simply be a line of text said when the NPC reaches what, in combat, would be incap. The NPC then gets up or despawns/whatever.

However, some of the time the revelation will be in the form of a datapad entry (or maybe give them their own datapad category). When the entertainer has gathered enough of these, she can hand them in to complete her assignment.

Differenttunes/dances/flourishes would have different effects on different npcs, some of them discernable by clues - e.g. bothans don't like this tune, wookies love that particular dance, most of them individual to the npc. Some scope would be neccessary to cater to groups.

Given the nature of the character and thus the sorts of individual likely to be playing them, the time taken to take the NPCs guard down and wait for the next to arrive is probably sufficient penalty for failure, alternatively a slight reduction in the mission reward. Perhaps on a high-risk mission there would be a small percentage chance that a failure would result in an npc starting a fight, but it should be a small chance.

These venues should primarily be cantinas, but it might also be beneficial to make them some of the factional camps that get placed from time to time, and other npc rich locations. The best way to support a larger entertainer community is not to lock them down 24/7 of gameplay, with only one character per server, into one location. That's not entertainment, thats punishment.

Now this on its own may be enough to breathe some life into the class. But it's also just another hand in system. There are a few steps it could be carried further to make a system that also breathes live into the rest of the game.

This could be linked up with the spy class. The spy class could be the ones who provide entertainers with the initial way points to try and dig up clues and rumors for them - the same way that scouts provide hides for tailors and armorers, although a system to provide infrastructure would absolutely required.

Either with or without the spy class, this could be used to provide a system for generating player-to-player missions. With the evidence that an entertainer has gathered properly shaped together, they could produce a mission, so that as well as visiting the cantina for your battle fatigue, you would now also visit it to get mission deeds from entertainers.

There are a small number of parameters that would have to be thought out carefully to bring all of this together, but it is no more complex than a simple combat system at heart; the mission trading concept needs some simple bounds such as how many mission deeds any individual can carry, what sort of lifetime a mission deed retains.

In the initial drafting of this concept, I have not included any consideration for NPCs "returning" this entertainer form of combat, and it may not be neccessary. If the SWG team pick up on this idea, though, they may want to at least *consider* whether NPCs might have some "entertainment" combatmoves of their own - such as body language, or it could be as simple as the npc says "This is boring" or "I'm not enjoying this" or gets up and claps, all of which have some combat-parallel, e.g. heckling by the NPC might lower the entertainers mind.

Well. Those are my thoughts, I've suggested similar to this before and received fairly warm responses. Who knows what the present audience will think tho, so with that, I exit stage left

~ Petron

Message Edited by Petron on 10-09-2004 10:48 PM

fett3041

Sun Oct 10, 2004 3:56 am

#2

I like it. It gives us an actual objective, after we've reached Master.

Petron wrote:

This could be linked up with the spy class. The spy class could be the ones who provide entertainers with the initial way points to try and dig up clues and rumors for them - the same way that scouts provide hides for tailors and armorers, although a system to provide infrastructure would absolutely required.

Either with or without the spy class, this could be used to provide a system for generating player-to-player missions. With the evidence that an entertainer has gathered properly shaped together, they could produce a mission, so that as well as visiting the cantina for your battle fatigue, you would now also visit it to get mission deeds from entertainers.

I think this should be the core of Bounty Hunter player/Jedi missions. No seeker droids. Only the Hunter's own network of spies and informants.

For example:

BHJoe gets a mission for UberJeti, and passes the word to his informants via email to be on the lookout for this fiend of the Empire. While BHJoe is waiting for word of a sighting of UberJeti, he can still take standard NPC missions, which droids can still be used for.

It could take hours, days, weeks, or months to finally get word on this Jedi. In that time, the Bounty Hunter can either keep taking NPC missions, or can turn around and dump the player mission. Or, another Hunter's network spots the prey first, and BHJoe fails the mission.

Maestr'o is performing with a grand troupe of entertainers in a cantina. In walks UberJeti, who asks for a buff, unaware that Maestr'o is on Joe's payroll. Maestr'o completes the buff (after all, UberJeti tipped), wishes UberJeti well, and contacts BHJoe.

Joe hotfoots (hotfeets? *shrug*) it to Maestr'o's cantina just in time to see his prey dash away. THE CHASE IS ON.

Maybe BHJoe kills the Jedi... maybe it's the other way around. What we DO know, is that all of a sudden Jedi really have to be careful who they approach (they ARE supposed to be in hiding afterall), and we get some great interraction between two very neglected classes.

Mo'Ste Elosk
Mo'Set Elosk
-----------------------------------------
May the Force grant us
the Wisdom to discover the Right,
the Will to choose it,
and the Strength to make it endure.

Goldshadow

Sun Oct 10, 2004 7:57 am

#3

fett3041 wrote:

I like it. It gives us an actual objective, after we've reached Master.

Petron wrote:

This could be linked up with the spy class. The spy class could be the ones who provide entertainers with the initial way points to try and dig up clues and rumors for them - the same way that scouts provide hides for tailors and armorers, although a system to provide infrastructure would absolutely required.

Either with or without the spy class, this could be used to provide a system for generating player-to-player missions. With the evidence that an entertainer has gathered properly shaped together, they could produce a mission, so that as well as visiting the cantina for your battle fatigue, you would now also visit it to get mission deeds from entertainers.

I think this should be the core of Bounty Hunter player/Jedi missions. No seeker droids. Only the Hunter's own network of spies and informants.

For example:

BHJoe gets a mission for UberJeti, and passes the word to his informants via email to be on the lookout for this fiend of the Empire. While BHJoe is waiting for word of a sighting of UberJeti, he can still take standard NPC missions, which droids can still be used for.

It could take hours, days, weeks, or months to finally get word on this Jedi. In that time, the Bounty Hunter can either keep taking NPC missions, or can turn around and dump the player mission. Or, another Hunter's network spots the prey first, and BHJoe fails the mission.

Maestr'o is performing with a grand troupe of entertainers in a cantina. In walks UberJeti, who asks for a buff, unaware that Maestr'o is on Joe's payroll. Maestr'o completes the buff (after all, UberJeti tipped), wishes UberJeti well, and contacts BHJoe.

Joe hotfoots (hotfeets? *shrug*) it to Maestr'o's cantina just in time to see his prey dash away. THE CHASE IS ON.

Maybe BHJoe kills the Jedi... maybe it's the other way around. What we DO know, is that all of a sudden Jedi really have to be careful who they approach (they ARE supposed to be in hiding afterall), and we get some great interraction between two very neglected classes.

Please allow me to change this scenario just a bit:

Maestr'o is performing with a grand troupe of entertainers in a cantina. In walks UberJeti, who asks for a buff, unaware that Maestr'o is on Joe's payroll. Maestro sends a tell that UberJeti is at WickedCoolCantina. Maestr'o fakes the buff (Just re-target your /setper on someone else).

4 minutes Later -

Maestro: Ok your buff is done. Did it work?

UberJeti: No.

Maestro: Are you sure you were listening. Let me try again.

2 minutes later BHJoe walks into the Cantina to an Un-buffed UberJeti.

We may as well get SOME use out of the buff interface that we have.

--------------
Roho Traideb
Beloved of Kirahfaye
Pre-NGE: Master Entertainer/Musician, and Novice Image Designer/Dancer
Emeritus Entertainer Dev Pro Tempore

- I support ATK Players and Playstyle -

Petron

Sun Oct 10, 2004 10:36 am

#4

fett3041 wrote:

I like it. It gives us an actual objective, after we've reached Master.

There is something I failed to stress in my original description: It is mostly a matter of "disgusing" the combat system that SWG already has, aliasing things like "stun" as "amuse", dizzy as "sadden", etc, etc. In almost every other sense it remains like combat. But instead of killing your target, you are trying to win your audience over.

A whole plethora of ideas can be built on this system, none of them crucial to its success, many of them modular - e.g. the link in to the spy system and bounty hunters, etc, etc.

Quick finger-in-air example would be a way to take a particular factional player action and tokenize it into a mission generation. It doesn't need to be overly fancy, just store a recent history of events, and randomly, when an entertainer takes a mission, choose one of the player events to inject into his mission. When he completes the mission, the named player may end up on a bounty hunter or jedi or spy player mission. There are some hoo-has to be thought out in this one, for sure; but think of the community building potentials that are at the end of it. Imagine looking at a mission and seeing it says "Punish Dar'fel for Jabba" and Dar'Fel happens to be a friend of yours. Imagine if the system allowed you a couple of choices as to what kind of mission to make it. You can give the mission to a bounty hunter to find and kill Dar'Fel, or you can give it to a spy/smuggler to "warn" dar'fel...

(These could be tied to NPCs too, of course, and that might allow for "defend the npc" type missions that we know already exist).

It would also be neccessary for the design team to sit down before starting on this and choose how far they want it to go; otherwise it may create unpleasant changes in play-method as they extend it. For instance, if they want to go the whole hog and base a large chunk of player-to-player mission exchange, then there is potential for a lot of social-exchange seeding system.

That last part is all about sequencing, which just means make the core of it robust. Consider

Bounty hunter instigates investigation -> pass on to -> multiple spies track down "rumors" -> pass on to -> multiple entertainers aquire gossip/facts/etc, while spies/bounty hunters/entetainers all get to track down "evidence" -> pass to "spies" to "craft" into "reports" and "stories" -> pass back to bounty hunters.

As long as the resulting mission farm that this generates always has the potential to be a success on its individual merrit but a failure in terms of contributing to the overall originating mission story line, there is a huge potential for a ton of simplistic mission steps building into a larger something interesting.

There's a significant amount of content to add there, mostly its all text tho and a few new mission sequences. Most of it can use very simple tokens to rapidly build into something with a lot of variety.

As long as the overall path is chosen early, you can probably easily implement this in a nice, modular fashion.

The concepts here are:

- reuse the combat system,

- reuse the mission system,

- reuse the crafting system.

=)

Odooslet

Sun Oct 10, 2004 2:31 pm

#5

I think this is a brilliant idea. It adds some excitement to the entertainer profession and also gives entertainers reason to not be AFK all the time!

Odooslet(s)

Proud member of The Blindzebra Hunters Guild

Entertainer Archive

Thread: Entertainers: How to breathe life into the classes