Musician Archive
Thread: Musician top five issues, and dev responses
wait so it took thunderheard almost 4 weeks to right a few sentences? is there anything else??
but other than that the sentences sound good
Fight on Vibro Harp Underground!
Dear Musicians,
The devs have responded to the "top-five issues" list I submitted to them a little while ago -- a list I developed by polling you for ideas in various threads on this forum. This e-mail lists my top five in yellow, sets forth the dev response, and in some case sets forth further dialogue between me and the devs.
1. New songs, new instruments, and new sounds for duplicate instruments. I'm sure the devs are aware that Musicians' patience is wearing thin. Six months is a long time to play the same nine or ten songs!
Dev response: A batch of new songs is in progress, but we don't have an ETA. Thunderheart adds: "I understand and I empathize. The best I can do is make a pest of myself on this issue."
2. Find fun ways to encourage at-the-keyboard play.
Dev response: We love this request. There is a “however” though. This is very difficult to do technologically. We did have a great solution for Surveyors though. For surveyors, every so often (a time delay based on when someone would be at their computer or not), a System Message will display. The system message tells surveyors that “hey, if you go survey at spot X” in a certain amount of time, they get resource reward. In essence, they get a reward for being at their machine and catching the message.
How would you suggest doing this for musicians, with the two qualifying factors being that it has to make sense and be fun?
Here are some suggestions, drawn largely from the Musician board,on content that might encourage at-the-keyboard play in ways that are "fun" and "make sense":
1. Epic quests for musicians, along the lines of the quest for RIS armor.
2. Musical NPC "pets", and an accompanying "bandleader" skill for Master Musicians, allowing us to form our own "big bands" with NPCs who /bandflourish along with us.
3. Gig missions scaled not only to Musician skill but also to number of listeners, the amount of healing, or even "good reviews." A gig mission's payout might depend on the "reviews" a Musician gets while playing the gig. Listeners could "review" the show by radial-clicking on the Musician and "voting."
4. Add a "buff mission" to gig missions. Scale payout to size and duration of buff conferred. This would encourage use of our under-utilized buff, reward more highly-skilled Musicians, and encourage at-the-keyboard play (since it's hard to buff while AFK.)
5. Make instrument quality matter. Make it a factor in our buff or our healing rate or both. Add instrument-crafting missions.
6. Require performers doing gig missions to respond to "requests" from NPCs. Again, this would encourage at-the-keyboard play.
7. Allow player cantinas to contain gambling tables. Add more games, like craps. Let Musicians operate real casinos!
Dev reply: We like a lot of these ideas, but most of them will take a lot of coding, and not all of them are feasible.We hope we will be able to implementseveral of them, though perhaps not in the precise form suggested above.
3. Improve gig missions.
Dev response: In essence, anything that will come from a Terminal or an NPC will be go to location X, entertain for Y time and be done. We can increase mission payouts, but for activities, what would you suggest?
My reply: see the suggestions in response to #2 above.
4. Better content generally.
Dev response: We think so too. See #2 & #3 above.
5. Bugs relating to the nalargon and ommni box.You must keep these two instruments targeted at all times in order to play them. (This has become more of a problem now that command-line emotes don't always work; if you've been on a mount or vehicle recently, you can't emote or be emoted at via the command-line.) In addition, other players can move these instrumentsaround, which is annoying. Moreover, neither works in a player theater. Finally, the most recent patch seems to have eliminated flourish animations on the ommni and possibly other instruments.
Dev response: We're aware ofthe issues with emotes, theaters, and flourish animations, and we're working on fixes. As for targeting of the nalargon and ommni box, these instruments work differently from the other instruments in the game because they are placed in the game world, muchlike harvesters and houses, and are thus subject to a different set of rules. Wewill look into that issue and see what, if anything, we can do. [P.S. - Thunderheart is also aware of this issue and will make sure the devs continue to focus on it.]
That's cool, but they didn't really sound that perky. They didn't seem to have a clear answer. I can sort of see why.
I like that quest idea. Have a quest that ONLY certain level musicians can do, and obtain some sort of rare instrument. There would be no prereq for it. How about Max Reebo's XXX (XXX being some weird-arse instrument with a totally different sound).
I got it... why not make it so musicians can do missions for Max Reebo himself? Theyinvolve things like buffing and healing, and you get cool rewards. Maybe a +5 mind enhancement tape, non-craftable clothing items with built in healing, "signature", yet craftable, instruments, with some sort of sound tweak or healing bonus, as well as an appearance tweak. Maybe a schematic for a new instrument. Finally, you need to buff Jabba or something, and if you pass, Max Reebo gives you his secretly-guarded signature Vibro-Harp (if you remember that I love you dearly).
Just a thought from a bored guy.
KoraJubali wrote:
I remember the vibro-harp. and I can't wait to see it in action!
Fight on Vibro Harp Underground!
I know this probaly means recoding the omni & nalargon totaly but what if they made them "vehicles" that a entertainer got in. The main problemI see is the limitation of no "vehicles" indoors. However vehicles are things that are "placed" & yet you don't need to keep them targeted. I may be off base code wise but have they looked at the vehicle code to see if it is adaptable to this situation?
NewJedi wrote:
5. Bugs relating to the nalargon and ommni box.You must keep these two instruments targeted at all times in order to play them. (This has become more of a problem now that command-line emotes don't always work; if you've been on a mount or vehicle recently, you can't emote or be emoted at via the command-line.) In addition, other players can move these instrumentsaround, which is annoying. Moreover, neither works in a player theater. Finally, the most recent patch seems to have eliminated flourish animations on the ommni and possibly other instruments.
Dev response: We're aware ofthe issues with emotes, theaters, and flourish animations, and we're working on fixes. As for targeting of the nalargon and ommni box, these instruments work differently from the other instruments in the game because they are placed in the game world, muchlike harvesters and houses, and are thus subject to a different set of rules. Wewill look into that issue and see what, if anything, we can do. [P.S. - Thunderheart is also aware of this issue and will make sure the devs continue to focus on it.]
Namirsolo wrote:
I really don't like the response to the nalargon and omni problem. Our best flourish/light (ventriloquism) can't be used with them and they are our master instruments. That just doesn't seem right.
not a musician (yet)but I agree
Well, we shall see how many of these things the Devs can rework, and enhance...
/crosses fingers
...and thanks Ricky for being such aRockin' Correspondent! 
~Q~
1. New songs, new instruments, and new sounds for duplicate instruments. I'm sure the devs are aware that Musicians' patience is wearing thin. Six months is a long time to play the same nine or ten songs!
Dev response: A batch of new songs is in progress, but we don't have an ETA. Thunderheart adds: "I understand and I empathize. The best I can do is make a pest of myself on this issue."
Heh. As we have been. Go, us!
2. Find fun ways to encourage at-the-keyboard play.
Dev response: We love this request. There is a “however” though. This is very difficult to do technologically. We did have a great solution for Surveyors though. For surveyors, every so often (a time delay based on when someone would be at their computer or not), a System Message will display. The system message tells surveyors that “hey, if you go survey at spot X” in a certain amount of time, they get resource reward. In essence, they get a reward for being at their machine and catching the message.
As someone who's done a lot of Surveying...this does absolutely nothing to encourage me to be at my keyboard while doing so. I can bypass it very easily. And the reward is not worth the outlay of Action pointsit costs, anyway. So doing anything similar to performers would be like teaching a pig to sing; it would annoy the performers who are at their keyboards, and do absolutely zero to inhibit those who aren't. So no, it wasn't a great solution for Surveyors, and it's not a great solution for Musicians or Dancers.
How would you suggest doing this for musicians, with the two qualifying factors being that it has to make sense and be fun?
Here are some suggestions, drawn largely from the Musician board,on content that might encourage at-the-keyboard play in ways that are "fun" and "make sense":
1. Epic quests for musicians, along the lines of the quest for RIS armor.
It would be nice to feel that special, but I'm sure as hell not going to hold my breath. I twould be really, really good, though, if that were the way to get some cool,non-craftableinstrument.
4. Add a "buff mission" to gig missions. Scale payout to size and duration of buff conferred. This would encourage use of our under-utilized buff, reward more highly-skilled Musicians, and encourage at-the-keyboard play (since it's hard to buff while AFK.)
Good one! Start playing, when the NPC starts clapping you know you can do /setperform. When you stop, the NPC stops clapping, so presumably it stops listening.
No way to be sure on that, though, unless the buff gets activated by no longer hearing music, rather than having to actually /stoplisten, though.
5. Make instrument quality matter. Make it a factor in our buff or our healing rate or both. Add instrument-crafting missions.
This one would really, really grab me if it were instituted.
6. Require performers doing gig missions to respond to "requests" from NPCs. Again, this would encourage at-the-keyboard play.
This would work if it could not be routed around the same way sampling pop-ups are. And it would be good, if it didn't cost any more in Action than flourishing does normally.
Dev reply: We like a lot of these ideas, but most of them will take a lot of coding, and not all of them are feasible.We hope we will be able to implementseveral of them, though perhaps not in the precise form suggested above.
/sigh Just say right out that we're not important enough to devote that kind of time to. We'll understand. We may not like it, but we'll understand. At least, I think most will.
3. Improve gig missions.
Dev response: In essence, anything that will come from a Terminal or an NPC will be go to location X, entertain for Y time and be done. We can increase mission payouts, but for activities, what would you suggest?
Similar to Scout missions:
- HealZ amount of Mind Wounds/Fatigue (no time limit)
- Play forY amount of time
- Play for Z number of NPCs for Y amount of time each (as in get the NPC clapping for 2 minutes)
- Play for Y amount of time in Z number of venues (hotels, cantinas, theaters & amphitheaters) either PC or NPC
And for goddess' sake, scale it to skill! How do mission terminals see the weapon/skill and scale destroy missions? Perhaps you could have it key in on whether a certain song or dance is known and have the reward scale off that? In the case of music, we can equip instruments, but that would leave Dancers out in the cold, and our two highest level instruments aren't anything we can actually 'equip.' (Though we could pull them out and target them while we're using the mission terminal. Tricky, but possible.)
5. Bugs relating to the nalargon and ommni box.You must keep these two instruments targeted at all times in order to play them. (This has become more of a problem now that command-line emotes don't always work; if you've been on a mount or vehicle recently, you can't emote or be emoted at via the command-line.) In addition, other players can move these instrumentsaround, which is annoying. Moreover, neither works in a player theater. Finally, the most recent patch seems to have eliminated flourish animations on the ommni and possibly other instruments.
Dev response: We're aware ofthe issues with emotes, theaters, and flourish animations, and we're working on fixes. As for targeting of the nalargon and ommni box, these instruments work differently from the other instruments in the game because they are placed in the game world, muchlike harvesters and houses, and are thus subject to a different set of rules. Wewill look into that issue and see what, if anything, we can do. [P.S. - Thunderheart is also aware of this issue and will make sure the devs continue to focus on it.]
The usual idea submitted in response to that is to incorporate some of the code used in vehicles, since they are also in the world, but still equipped. Would that work?
About the response I suppose I expected, since none of it surprised me. On the other hand, none of it encouraged me, either. /sigh
The list looks good. I can personally deal with the Nal / Ommni Box issues. Of course since I am, and have been a Master for a long time, I just don't use an Ommni, and rarely pull the Nal, and then only for requests. I do not willingly plop it down. hehe.
I totally love the idea of quests for, and I am going to broaden this, entertainers. Incorporate a quest system that will utilize cantinas in player cities as well as the more popular "starter town" cantinas.
Every 2 skill levels you achieve, you have the option to run a class quest which will result in an article od clothing that is ONLY for entertainers. And expand on it once the player reaches Novice Musician/Dancer, let them run a quest at novice with the reward to be a few pieces of custom Musician/Dancer only clothing. And again at skill level 2 and again at 4. Then at master let us run a slightly longer quest, where we may be required to hit say 5 player cantinas and be required to play at eaach for 30 minutes. The payout for this one would be as was mentioned in your list, a full set of Musician/Dancer only Armor, to help protect us getting from gig to gig
It has to be unique however.I know that some games *cough* Dark Age of *cough* yeah...you know, has Class only armor. What would be so bad about that? hehe, I don't care if a Master Bounty Hunter can get a an elite Bounty Hunter only suit...more power to em...but I think this might be a very fun thing to do. it is definately adding more content.
So...in all, you would have a few unique articles of clothing for going up the entertainer tree, then a full, Musician/Dancer suit once ya hit level 4 in those profs, and finally a Master only suit of armor that can only be worn by a Master.
I like it, I like it alot
Maybe the Image Designers can run a quest where they have to use thier skills on an NPC for thier quests and they end up with a placeable "barber Chair" and equiptable Cosmetic bag...hehe
Durney Kova
BABE - Lowca
Master Entertainer/Master Musician/Master Image Designer
Novice Dancer/Novice Medic