Musician Archive

This is the same post thta i put in the issues for NewJedi, so if you read that one you don't need to read this again. This is my suggestion on fixing almost all musician problems:

Ya know how dancers sometimes fall? It happens a lot at lower levels, and i've even seen a few nearmaster dancers fall every now and then. Yet there is absolutely no equivalent for musicians. Some of your brains may be catching on at this point but i'm going to continue to explain for those who haven't quite picked up my line of thinking. A lot of the problems that plague musicians is SW1 on the slither. Hold that thought...:uke::...okay, where was I? ahh yes. The main problem is that newbies only have ONE song and ONE instrument. Well, here's my suggestion. Hows about one or two songs and EVERY instrument. Sound crazy? Not with the amazing new invention created loudly by first year trumpet players everywhere: WRONG NOTES.

Still confused? Here's how it would break down: When playing, an instrumentalist would go through the song. /flo 1; /flo 6; /flo WHAT NOTE WAS THAT?!?! In the middle of a lick (especially flourishes) the musician would hit a wrong note. An out of tune of mistimed or hideously loud or blatty note. Or a playre would drop his/her instrument and have to stop and pick it up (this would cause damage to the instrument of course, making it play wrong notes more often). Or an amp would feedback, or a player would start the wrong song/flourish at the wrong time.You get the picture. Newbies would play wrong notes more often, and harder instruments would also cause more screw-ups. If a first day newb, for example, asked to tinker with a master's narlagon, not a single note would be right. If a master played that same newb's slither, it would sound perfect, every note exactly as it is written. Then of course as you progress you'll become proficient at more instruments and will be able to do more things on them well. You would have one "good" song and one "learning" song so that you could have more variety in cantinas. The learning song would have more screw-ups and the good would be near perfect. Furthermore, instruments that are crafted better, in addition to giving OTHER bonuses that they so badly deserve, would make less mistakes. (maybe, though, because they are professional quality instruments they would make more, but with bonuses? I don't know, different topic entirely)

This brings up another good point. How do we get to Carnegie Hall? Why, the same way that the devs saw fit to let artisans level up faster: PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. You could just sit in your house, or somewhere hopefully private, and type /practicemusic starwars1 or some other song that you want to practice song. You would get a slight bonus to XP, at the cost of no (or reduced for higher lev) healing powers, and added mistakes. You could also have private teachers. A teacher would be grouped with you and would type /teachmusic starwars1. Then you would get an even larger bonus to XP. For the teachers, it would be a source of income (say, 100cr per 30min lesson or something), and a way to realy get a personal bond withnewer characters. Maybe you could also get apprentice points, just REEAAAAALLLLY SLOWLY. You could teach one on one or in huge classes, but there would only be one teacher per group who would would affect the XP bonus of the student in direct relation to their skill as a musician. In fact, that could be a new skill branch for musician: Teaching. It would differentiate entertainers and musicians, and would eliminate the uneeded two healing columns. If composition is ever implemented, that could be taught as well.

One last point: to implement the new system of mistakes, different types of skill bonuses and XPwould be needed to make one better at a particular kind of instrument. For instance: every time you get 6 musicXP for playing your slither on SW1, you wouldalso get something like 4 XP of "High Wind Proficiency". Playing a Fizz would give "Low Wind Proficiency", the bandfill/omni would give percussion or whatever, ETC ETC. Maybe it wouldn't work like normal XP, but more like the more you have, the less mistakes you make. OR you could get "general instrument proficiency", and could specialize later (so that EVERYONE isn't the master at EVERY instrument at master musician). Furthermore, it could lead to different specialized professions: High Wind Instrumentalist, Percussionist, etc.

That's my 2 billion credits, sorry that its so long but it had to be said.

Wiggin Justwiggin - Ahazi

Just wanted to assure you that I'm following this thread, and that I read your similar post in my "top issues" thread as well. As I said there, I routinely tease dancers about missing steps; they often retort by wondering why we musicians don't miss the occasional note, at least at lower levels. It's a fair question!

I know that the concept of INTENTIONALLY making music sound worse is a little hard to swallow. However, think about how often you see a dancer fall. Not all that often ESPECIALLY at higher levels. Its like one every 10 minutes MAYBE. I'm not suggesting that every other second someone screws up. What i'm saying is that its a bit unreal to have newbies play perfect. A scratched note every now and then ISN'T going to ruin a song, but it WILL make master musicians more sought out. I've NEVER walked into a cantina filled with novice dancers and been shocked by the amount of falling. That kind of frequency is ridiculous. But i also think its ridiculous that every musician, even those who've never picked up a horn, are switching from a different profession etc., etc., should be able to play perfect.

I made Master Entertainer without falling every 10 flourishes. I did fall, but it is not with the frequency you comment it to be. There are patterns that if put together will cause the dancer to fall, just like flourishes of the music that do not sound good following each other. You hit F7 while playing StarWars1 with a slitherhorn repeatedly and you will be asked to shoot yourself by your fellow band members.

And really, this is not trying to shoot down a dream or something of bad music. Its my pragmatic side talking sense of not wasting DEV time making the system worse.

- Weibacca
Master Musician and Entertainer
Kaadara, Naboo, Bria

I'm with Wei -- who's points are more elegantly made than I can muster at the moment. I don't think adding purposefully bad sounding elements to the musician class is necessary -- we already get that with bad flourish combinations or a disorganized band... let's not make the job any harder than it is to play decent, live, interactive music.

well I realy realy hate the idea off adding a mess up for musicians

ok it happens at the realy realy low levels but how often do you go to a concert adn hear the guys mess up?

with the ammount of playing and note we play even a 1 in 50 chance would happen way way too often

and a band of say 5 you would be hearing missed notes seening droped instruments and all arround crap all too often

no I dont think tis would add to the game make it more fun it would only make people mad adn ruin performances

if the dev have any free time to add somthing like this I haev a long long list of more entertain ing fun and constructive things to add then a way to make us sound and look bad

Until an open chord music system is implemented to create our own songs and beats, I very strongly dislike any tinkering with adding bad sound to the Musician class. People will not listen ever again if they walk into a cantina and the beginning slitherhorn player is practicing on his Nalargon.

No, no, and No.

Let me go a few other steps in a another direction. A few other companies (Propellerhead's Reason, Apple's Soundtrack, and even the old Mod samplers) put together electronic instruments that anyone can sit down and use and if you have a sense of timing and can carry a tune, make music from samples of other recorded instruments. In a sense, this is what we are doing with the SOE/LucasArts system. Its its own little utopia of sounds that usually sound great in mixed sequence and as much action as you can throw at it.

I'm not saying we don't need more songs, the thing is, we do need more songs, at all the levels. What we don't need is bad music in a disharmonic fashion. Instead of people say 'Starwars1 again on Slitherhorn?!', you have people seek out dancers that fall down a lot and play their own music in the background. So, if we want the fasttrack to death of the Musician, please go ahead, make this idea happen.

I'd rather not. And strongly NOT, too

- Weibacca
Master Musician and Entertainer
Kaadara, Naboo, Bria

There only thing I can think of that is worse than listening to a newb on a slitherhorn. That is a newb on a slitherhorn whomisses notes. /shudder /veto

I think the bad music is encoded into the system; it's just that we the players have been shielded from hearing the problem. After all,

The problem: The songs are hard-coded, with the melody, harmony, and baseline frequencies and note-lengths set. Slipping in a 'bad note' would take a lot of coding effort.

The observation: At low levels, when I would /stopmusic, I noticed that the NPCs around me would /not/ clap, but instead they would hold their ears and wince. This was a visual cue to me that the sound was not pleasing to them. Later, people would clap. Even now, at novice musician, when I /stopmusic, NPCs get up out of their chairs (specifically, Muftak at Mos Eisley) and give me an ovation!

The suggestion: Make the 'false note' simply visual. Have NPCs nearby wince and hold their ears, during the false note, not just at the end. Or, have the /musician/ hold his ears. Also, add an animation or two on the musician. The one I'm thinking of is, lift the horn away from your mouth and peer at the bell end. I think that imagery will read very well as 'what note did I just play' without the need of a system message cluttering our screen spam.

Tormud on Gorath

The newb slitherhorn doesn't sound that good to begin with, espically if there are several in a band. Making music sound worse isn't a good idea. I've heard bands that sound pretty horrible sometimes all on their own.

i didn't think of that, that could work. Instead of having missed notes (which, i agree, would make newbs absolutely godawful) the musician could simply stop and look at the horn, or stomp his feet. And at later levels, the musician would simply widen his eyes, or shake his head a bit. And little red notes would come out of your head.

I dunno know about you guys but I'll watch dancers fall left and right quite frequently, sometimes the same dancer 3 times in a few minutes. Sure its funny in that really messed up devious way, if I'm feelin friendly I /enourage /wince them and offer my hand to rub their asses for a deep tissue massage . I do think that musicans should fail somewhat, just not as much as the dancers for the sake of the sound horrifying listeners .

I'm for the mess ups, even at master...just like all the master dancers I know.

I like the idea of having a musician version of dancer falls. I don't think it should be the addition of a bad note because that would just punish the rest of us, but what about having a couple of different visual representations like what was mentioned earlier.

1) Musician has pictures of small broken music notes emanate from instrument, followed by them stopping music for a second to glare at the instrument (or hit it), then resume playing.

2) Musician drops instrument, sound stops while they reach down and pick it up, then sound and animation start back up and song continues. (Animation would have to be different for the instruments that are already on the floor. A different version of animation 1, perhaps.)

In either case, the music would stop for just a second or two while the animation played, then everything goes back to normal exactly the way dancer falls work now.