Musician Archive

As most of you know, Musicians have long had the ability to buff Focus and Willpower of audience members. But the patch on Test significantly improves this buff, in most ways. Here are some details:

1. /setperform: Dancers and Musicians now have the option to target a player and type /setPerformanceBuffTarget, or /setperfor for short. This command does work. Supposedly, if you play for just FIVE minutes, doing flourishes and performing reasonably advanced songs or dances, the buff to Mind (by Dancers) or Focus/Willpower (by Musicians) will last a full TWO HOURS. In fact, one of my audience members reported a three hour buff -- and the buff always doubles the Focus and Willpower stats. Nice.

2. Buff message: When youtarget someone , the audience member receives this message: "Richie Starsider [i.e., the Musician] directs their attention to you." The performer receives a slightly buggy message: "You [in my case Richie Starsider] direct your attention to Richie Starsider." Oops; the last term should be the audience member.

3. Passive buff: We can still buff people "passively" -- but it may be that the audience member has to be grouped with the performer to receive the passive buff. I'm getting reports of a 5- or 10-minute passive buff resulting in a 70-80 minute buff -- not bad.

4. Willpower stat bugs. I'm still finding that many recipients take a small hit to their Willpower stat during the buff, or after it wears off: hits range from 5-40 Willpower points. Eating food sometimes cures temporarily, but results in a spice-like downer afterwards. Relogging for 30+ minutes may work better; not sure yet. Focus and Mind don't seem to be affected adversely.

5. Targeting with /setperform. I'd been worried that ommni and nalargon players wouldn't be able to use a targeted buff, since we must keep those instruments targeted. But you only need target the player when typing /setperform; after that, you can target your instrument and play normally.

All in all, it's looking pretty cool. Will keep you posted.

Sweet! I was wondering if you could add a couple of details, though:

1) Can you target more than one person at a time? Based on Tech or Knowlege skill, maybe?

2) Is the duration still skill dependent? With a multi-hour buff, I'm wondering if having a novice musician/dancer add even their 10% is a little over-powering. Any non-masters on TC want to take a stab at this?

3) Does the buff get applied without /setperform, maybe at thecurrent 2:1 ratio?

4) Here's something to try: if someone buffs their mind stats with food/spice during the /setperform time, what happens? Does the doubling count the buffed valued, and if so, how much gets lost when the spice/food wears off? So if someone has a base 250 focus/willpower and they buff both+200 with food, after the performance will they have 500 (base value doubled, food ignored), 700 (base value doubled, food added to that), or 900 (food buff applied and doubled). Then, after the food wears off, will they have 500, 700, or keep the 900 for the entire 2-3 hours?

As great as this sounds, I really hope the devs move on to chef buffs next. 18 skill boxes devoted only to buffing, and 95% of the recipes get overwhelmed by doctor/smuggler (and now entertainer) buffs, which are from a single skill branch in the other professions.

1. You can only target one person at a time with /setperform. The buff takes only about 5 minutes to apply, at least if you flourish and play a high song.

2. The buff is apparently skill-dependent, but I'm not sure if skill affects scope or duration or both. Very few Musicians and Dancers skilled enough on Test to test this. I conceivably could surrender a few Musician boxes to test this; the Correspondent terminals allow me to surrender and regain Music skills at will. (Except that the surrender interface is currently borked on Test.)

3. Yes, there is a "passive" version of the buff that is applied without /setperform -- but only to anyone actually grouped with you, and even then the person must still /listen. This is apparently intended to discourage AFK'ing and buffing a whole cantina all night. It's still a big improvement over our current buff: I'm getting between a 6:1 and 12:1 ratio of performance-time to buff-duration. E.g., 5 minutes buffing for 60 minutes; 10 minutes for 72. I do think flourishing and song selection affect the duration, but it's awful hard to test this systematically with just little old me.

4. My biggest worry about the buff is that currently itcanslightly bork the Willpower stat of the listener. I've had several listeners complain that Willpower doesn't quite return to its full level after the buff wears off -- that it drops to 391/400 or some such. Food doesn't cure this, and indeed sometimes actually makes it worse. In fact, food interacts with the buff in unpredictable and worrisome ways. The devs are aware of these stat problems, which aren't limited to our buff. In Live, extended logging or eating eventually fixes these for me, butafter a day I still have a customer or two with a slightly borked Willpower stat on Test.

5. I absolutely agree: Chef buffs need love. After this fix, they'll need it more than ever. And the stat bugs need urgent attention, IMHO.

- Richie Starsider, Master Musician, Master Entertainer, lousy Rifleman, Test Center.

Sounding good. Glad they put in group feature. Otherwise on hunts I'd just be targeting all the time

Thank you for the information! You're doing a great job.

Do you have to keep the person targeted?

Have you tried /setperform PlayerName?

You can use other /commands and emoteslike this, verry handy for the Nala.

NewJedi, what about word on being able to buff ourselves? I'm a musician AND a swordsman, so most groups don't tend to drag TWO entertainers along, and I get no buff love myself.. can I target myself with /setperfor ?

Nice. Thanks NewJedi! I was going to ask the same thing as Epidap But I have another question:

Can this only happen in Cantinas and Camps, or can it happen anywhere? Like, can someone offer buffs out in the field? I have visions of using Ranger/Master Musician to let me find people with Track, get their fast and unseen and buff them (tips optional).

*peeks her head in*

I didn't find such detailed information in dancer forum. I'm assuming our buffs work the same way??

What I really love about this:

A way to bring in money for dancers and musicians! If we have to specifically target someone to buff, I would call this a pay per buff service No tips thanks, money ahead of time

We still should be able to buff ourselves.

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Goldy_Lhim wrote:

*peeks her head in*

I didn't find such detailed information in dancer forum. I'm assuming our buffs work the same way??

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Goldy, yes they do, exceptthat Dancersbuff the Mind stat. Also, you have to be a highly-skilled Dancer to confer much of a buff.

One plus for Dancers: I haven't seen any evidence that the Dancer buff borks any stats, whereas our Musician bug borks the Willpower stat sometimes. (I am hopeful, though, that the devs will have a fix to this and other stat bugs soon.)