Entertainer Archive

Until now, the argument has largely been "Why would people go out of their way to a player run cantina with cover charge when they can go to the cantina in town for free?" And the response has generally been "Clientelle with discriminating tastes will pay to see quality entertainment." This never rang true with me, though. There isn't THAT much range in music after the first month or so of gameplay, so the marginal benefit of hearing coordinated musicians doesn't outweigh the monetary or time costs.

Well, looks like last night showed me why player owned cantinas will be successful:

On Theed (Sunrunner), we have a nice cantina going, with a generally good audience, a load of regulars, and a few master musicians. Pretty idylic, until yesterday.

Not that it was a big big deal or anything, but a few Pokemon handlers came in and started pulling giant monsters out of their back pockets. I can't even tell what the creatures were, because only their lower torsos fit into the room.

Needless to say, the Pokemon kids could barely spell, using the usual Idiot On Line span of abbreviations and errors.

Well, the musicians put on a strike, and refused to play until all the Pikachus and Jigglypuffs were put away. Unfortunately, the kiddies didn't have an BF to heal, they were just on a griefing run, so the only people affected were legit customers.

Us musicians could have moved over to the theatre, but the same thing would just happen again, so that was out too.

From what I understand, player run cantinas will have the ability to bounce clientelle, or refuse entry. So it looks like THAT will be the true lifeblood of a player run cantina: not the ability to hear great musicians, but to avoid the prattle of the griefer lice.

"the Pokemon kids" .. LOL!

I think you are wrong about your first assumption, that all music is going to be the same. That is really only going to be tru if you are listening to those who have no idea what they are doing when it comes to music theory. Try checking out The Blue Moon Cantina on Tatooine near Anchorhead (Sunrunner) I can't remember the coordinates at the moment, but its the biggest building just west of town, not far from the goofy solar power looking things on the edge of town. Just down the hill from there. I'll reply back with x,y when I get in after the login server connection is available.

The dev's could easily fix this with a no mobs in the cantina change. I'd like to see the same for med centers. They often look more like vet offices and it's hard to see who needs healing when you are covered by a giant paw.

The people who dont tip, dont care about music, and only come to the cantina to heal mind wounds and BF will still go to the normal cantina, provided any musicians will even be there. I'd say the only ones who will stick to the normal cantinas will be the novice slitherhorn SW1 players who only took entertainer so they can heal their own wounds, which is fine with me. High class players will go to the high class joint, its that simple. Why do people go to fancy restaurants that you have to wear a tie and jacketto get in when they can stop at McDonalds and hit the drive-thru? Its all a matter of taste

Sorry, I was a little unclear. When I said all the music would be the same, I was making an oversimplified generalization. Of course, music with master musicians playing phat omni box beats, and coordinated bands with interesting flourish timings will be different from Slither SW1s. I guess what I meant is that after 3 months, you will have tired of ALL the variations in the game music. There's only so much you can do with 8 songs with 9 possible melody lines each. Yes, there is a big gulf between good and bad, but I can almost guarantee you, if they haven't added music yet, that in 12 months from now most players will have the sound turned off when they go to a cantina. You can't listen to the same music continually for 12 months without going insane.

However, the social interaction always changes, and there will always be clientelle who don't go AFK but hang around and chat in cantinas. I think the big draw for player built cantinas will be the exclusivity of the clientelle, not so much the exclusivity of the musicians. The musicians in the private cantinas will be better, of course, but that will be a bonus, not a main draw. Kinda like piano players in fancy cocktail bars.