Musician Archive
Thread: My report to TH on our April 2004 Top Issues
I have now tallied the results from this thread and submitted our resulting "top five issues," along with another 9 issues after that, to Thunderheart. I tried to combine a couple of issues so that we would have maximum impact with our "top five." E.g., I could have treated "New songs," "new instruments," and "unique instrument sounds"separately, but that would've bumped "targeting nalargon and ommni" and even AFKing out of the top five. Likewise, I combined the "nalargon and ommni targeting bug" with a related issue, the "player theater bugs," so that both would make it into the top five.
FYI, TH asked for extended descriptions of the top five, and then just a list of the remaining issues cited by significant numbers of people after that. He didn't want me to list every issue mentioned just by one or two people, so my apologies if your pet issue didn't make it onto the list. If your issue isn't covered here, please post at the end of this thread, and I'll be sure to pass it along in a separate communication to TH. Igather up all such suggestions andperiodically give TH a Big List O Ideas for Musicians.
Finally, please note that I was asked to submit two files, an Excel spreadsheet with a short summary of each issue, and a Word file with a longer explanation of the top five. What follows is an effort to combine both reports into one.Thus you'll see that I wasn't able to give long explanations for items 6 through 14. Anyway, here's what I reported:
1. New songs, new instruments, and new sounds for each instrument. "New songs" and "new instruments" should be self-explanatory. By "new sounds," we mean that each instrument should have a unique sound. Right now, there are six horns but only two different horn sounds; likewise, the ommni box and bandfill sound identical. The nalargon too often sounds like a “steel drum.”
2. Improved buffs: We’d like the ability to buff ourselves with our Focus/Willpower buff, just as Doctors can buff themselves. Just as important, we’d like the ability to tell whether we’re buffing properly while in the process of buffing. Likewise, we’d like to be able to tell whether we’ve completed the buff properly; currently, we must rely on the recipient to tell us honestly whether it worked. Finally, we’d like shorter buff times – and clarification on whether the 30-second “speed buff” is an exploit.
3. More content, including quests and crafting: We’re happy to hear about the new Social Adventure, but we doubt that this alone will be enough content to keep Master Musicians busy in the long term. We’d like to see more interesting and rewarding gig missions; entertainer-oriented Theme Parks; Musician-centered quests; post-Master goals, perhaps measured by a new yardstick such as Fame; and the ability to craft instruments of high quality that perform better (e.g., perhaps buff more quickly) than lower-quality instruments. In fact, a better crafting system could be a source of significant new content for us. As is, once we make Master, we don’t have much to do. [Edit: I tacked on crafting here because otherwise it wouldn't have made it into the top five, since it wasn't cited as often as these other issues, but I felt it did relate to content.]
4. AFK’ing. This can be addressed not only by adding content (see #3 above), but also by denying XP to AFK’ers; by making AFK’ers turn invisible; by logging AFK’ers out after 15 minutes; perhaps by nerfing the macro function, or at least nerfing the ability to make recursive, repeatable macros that run for days on end; or by making unattended gameplay a violation of the Terms of Service, as is the case for several other MMORPGs.
5. Targeting of the nalargon and ommni box and related issues in player theaters. To play the nalargon or ommni, you must currently keep the instrument targeted at all times. If you fail to do so (e.g., by targeting someone with the mouse to buff or emote at them), you stop playing immediately. This is supremely annoying. And you can’t play these instruments at all on stage at player theaters. More generally, theater stages are bugged: you can’t heal there, or get XP while playing there.
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6. Make cantinas more interesting by adding gambling, mini-games, and other content.
7. Implement Fame, NPC bandmembers, or other post-Master goals.[This admittedly repeats some of item 3 above, but I wanted to make sure the devs didn't miss the "Fame" idea, which pops up a lot.]
8. Lighting effects: Make them affect gameplay, for example by decreasing buff time or increasing heal rates.
9. Stringed instrument: Many Musicians want a stringed instrument for Musicians who don't take Master Entertainer.
10. /register doesn't work properly.
11. More band-oriented content. Quests for bands, or goals for bands to achieve.
12. /bandflourish XP. Some Musicians want all band members to get XP for /bandflo's.
13. More flourishes and flourish animations.
14. Usefulness. Make Musicians more "useful" in general, and in the GCW in particular.
Message Edited by NewJedi on 04-12-2004 10:58 AM
Message Edited by NewJedi on 04-12-2004 11:08 AM
1 Person buffing as Master Musican should take just 4or 5 minutes group buff 10-15 minutes (As Master)
#2 BF Healing in Camps.
A Master Musician (only Master) should be able to heal BF in Camps, okay only in Ranger Camps maybe.
#3 Different sound for the insturments, all Instruments shold have an own sound.
#4 More songs where the mandol sounds like a guitar, roxx ^^
#5 Nicer flourishes 4 Virtuoso
ok thats all cya
1. Entertainer missions- More fun and more rewarding I want to play at a packed theater and make more money each skill box and by the time im master.. 10k per missions, they should tell me which flourishes i need to to in order in the mission...like a minigame
2. Mind Damage healing- I think musicians AND dancers should be able to heal mind since thats what the whole professions are about, mind healing. I thinkwe should be ableto make Stims that only master musicians/dancers can use, This is a special stim that can heal a persons mind, but also giving you 10 willpower and focus wounds.
3. Self buffs- We should be able to buff ourselfs
4. Mandivol and Ceremonial as Master Musician- I want to play every instrument in the game since there arent too many and the guitar is so cool. But i dont want to pay 40 skill points for one.
5. More content- More songs,flourishes, insturments, etc..
#2. AFKers! FIX THEM!!
#3. Keeping Nalargon and Ommni Box selected.
#4. We need more uniqueness to Cantinas!
#5. Heal BF in camps!!!! Such a wanted issue.
BTW, the Mandoviol and Ceremonial are special because you gotta be a Master Entertainer.
1) new instruments that don't sound exactly like the old instruments. No more horns or drums.
2) new songs
3) self-buffing
4) reliable buff timer or way to tell if fully buffed
5) return xp for bandflourishes (why not? taking it out hasn't solved the afk problem at all. This way we would at least have incentive to sound good).
Without my ingame wife, and our band there is no way I would still be a musician, she is the only reason my char still is a musician, after mastering it together back in august, I love playing, and I love entertaining as a profession but lately it has become quite unbearable
2: More new/different sounds/songs for instruments.
Having a total of 10 instruments and having two times 3 (traz/fanfar/slither, and chid/kloo/fizz) of those share the same sounds is not good enough, more variety is
needed.
3: Ability to self buff
Docs can, and we should be able to.
4: More band friendly content.
One of the few ways of surviving long as a musician is to form bands, game should provide us with more help to keep those going.
5: AFK'ing
Something needs to be done, I am not sure what, but I havent set foot in a cantina for months, because there is no life there anymore, just mindless grinding, soe gave the ent proffessions a serious dissadvantage by forcing people to master the proffessions. The few good prospects are lost in the jungle of all the afkers now
1. More Content for Masters
2. AFKing
3. Buff timer!!! AND make it shorter.
4. Mind Healing
5. More songs, More instruments - That dont sounds like the old ones 
Hmm, I find this quite hard to do as there really is so much wrong with the entertainment professions... having said that I wouldn't be anything else
1. Content, content, content - I feel that the developers could make use of EXISTING content such as the theme parks and giving entertainers a way to work through them. There have been many good suggestions in the past on storylines to implement this so I won't go into it here. But the big one has to be some way to improve your skills to one day play with the Max Rebo Band, perhaps filling in for the latest musician who went the way of the Sarlacc pit. Entertainers are also very well placed to play spies so that approach could be used for some of the other theme parks.
2. New songs and instruments/sounds for existing - I'm one of those musicians that has the sound turned on when I play so I can hear what I am doing and try different combinations to see what works and what doesn't. However, almost 6 months into being a master musician I really would love to hear something different be it a completely new song or a different sound for an instrument so I can play about with orchestration some more.
3. Buffing - Thank you for putting them in... but give us a decent UI to go with it please so we can be clear that someone is actually receiving the buff and how long to go before they receive the full buff, and an indication of what level they actually receive. Sure the timing isn't a huge issue as I can use my alias.. but fact is it is a half finshed system... please finish it And I would also like to be able to buff myself.
4. More Crafting Options - Again many have suggested the idea of craftable holorecordings of music/dance that can be used out in the field. I rather like the idea of providing musicians with another revenue stream and think this may be viable way of doing. They should not however heal BF or people won't return to the cities.
5. Missions - As it stands these are a farce for entertainers. Again there have been great suggestions on how to improve them, one I particularly liked was a simon says style mission where you go and jam with a musician... learning new phrases by echoing what they do and getting xp and pay for doing so. In the interim.. at least increase the pay for people!
I have a bunch of other issues but I think these are my main ones...
#1 Advertisement system
#2 Music Theme Parks or add music to current Theme Parks
#3 Different and more music missions as discussed in previous threads involving grouping and master missions
#4 Add /register Master to /register command
I believe the bug fixes (omni/nala and /register problem) and the instruments/songs are things that we should expect from the team so I did not include them on my top 5. Bug fixes are the Live Teams job, as in I pay them to do it. Instruments and songs have been promised and I will not beg for them.
#2 - More sounds - at present half the music instruments sound the same, I'd really like them to have a wider variety of sounds (and yes, normal horns are already plenty enough - give us some real exotic starwarsy sound). I'd be satisfied to have more variety just through this.
#3 - Buffs - Compared to buffs from other professions it simply takes far to long to buff a complete group of customers for example. You can't give the players something to buff themselves "on the way" as other Buff-Professions can. Also you can't buff yourself as other professions can.
#4 - Ommni and Nalargon - It's really a pain to have to spell every name after the command to emote with people - I know it has been said that it will be very hard to do because of the way these objects are placed into the world (like Harvis or Houses) ... but using a harvester I can just stand beside it without having it targeted and use the /commands too ... so there should be a way to stand next to the nalargon and use it with commands, no matter what's targeted.
#5 - Content - As an example I'd like a seperate story line to get into Jabbas Palace - you have to to some musician related delivery missions - go to certain Cantinas and play for an audience - Buff some NPCs etc.
1: Usefullness, Nobody needs master musician, atleast on tempest. When I still played my musician I got1 buff request a gaming session (friday / saturday gaming session is between 7 and 10 hours each depending on how tired/bored I am), so I'm not needed.
2: AFK tainers, Kill them. They are annoying as a musician and as a Ranger I hate that every cantina is only occupied by AFK tainers, I want to be greeted, be asked how my field trip was, fail that and you might as well implement NPC entertainers and make entertainer a hobby which costs 0 skillpoints (I am serious about this hobby thing, the server I play a Ranger at rarely has a non AFK entertainer anywhere and I planet hop to find one ending up just stacking the BF to the point where it HAS to be healed and then I just AFK park myself and save alot of money on tips, no hello or /wave no pay).
3: Content, more songs, better missions, some kind of quests.
4: Healing in camps, Make the 2 fieldbases heal BF when there's a master musician / dancer performing in it, also check the Ranger forum for a fantastic document about modular camps where musician / dancers can craft a BF healing module.
5: Instrument experimentation, it is still pointless to sell them on a vendor. After a month of having a vendor up with 4 of each, I sold a few fizzes and Slitherhorns and my guess is only to fellow guild members, not sure, I hardly ever log in to my Tempest account because of point 1.