Musician Archive
Thread: From your Correspondent: inviting suggestions on AFK'ing
DroppingEnglish wrote:
A enraged audience could cause nearby NPCs to storm the stage and attack the horrible musicians.
as funny as this sounds (i'd personally love to see that)
what about griefers that would just be bored or enraged just to be jerks?
Vema and JohnMarble, I also like the idea of making our profession more interactive, and I kinda like John's idea of audience feedback. I actually batted something like that around with the Musician dev a while ago. Trouble is, such a feature might be fun at first, but would it become annoying after a while? I remember I was mildly interested in thesurvey "actions" when they firstwere added to the game, but now I just see them as an obstacle to click by.
Maybe the answer is to make the "game within a game" of "audience feedback" a somewhat challenging strategy game? The fishing interface in SWG might be a start, but even that's not challenging enough. In "A Tale in the Desert," every time you make charcoal, you have to play a little mini-game requiring you toadd wood, vent with air, douse with water, etc., depending on how thefurnace responds. That little mini-game still is fun for me, lo these many months. "Pazaak" from KOTOR is another example: the mini-game itself is fun in itself, and it stays fun. Could we design a"Music performance" game for the devs that would both reward at-the-keyboard play and befun?
The dancer wouldn't have any healing or buffing capabilities. Just someone to fill an empty NPC cantina.
Musicianship takes a very long time to grind. Longer than most combat professions. If a player stopped earning xp when they went AFK, it would be among the most rare professions out there. If you consider implementing a "no xp if afk" system, please reduce the number of xp required to master.
Haven't been playing a musician long. although I am a professional entertainer in real life (dancer). so maybe I don'tunderstand the full situation, but here are my two credits.
I'm not sure how to fix this. I have to admit I am spending about half of my time AFK grinding (gets ready for flames)and the other half ATK. I do enjoy every minute of my ATK time, so it's not that I find it boring, more like it just takes so dang long to level a musician. I would be more than happy to do it all ATK if it were just myself, but I want to be the best musician I can as soon as I can for my guildmates.
most of myATK grinding is in the field. I go out hunting frequently with my PA, who understand theimportance of entertainers, They always make sure an entertainer is along, especially for PVP. Maybe if entertainers were made to feel more part of the GCW and were given a significant role in combat there would be less afktaining. Right now I follow the combat medics around and heal their mind wounds they get from throwing mind heals, help heal disease and poison damage in PVP, and re-apply buffs as needed in the field. I have fun doing it because I feel useful. Maybe they need to give entertainers a more active role in combat, or maybe they need to start playing up the benefits of having an entertainer along so more people will understand how neccessary they are. Perhaps if there were more to do than just sit in the cantina, more entertainers would be ATK because it is fun to be.
The other reason I AFK is to leave someone there to heal mind wounds in our player city and to give mind buffs. We have an afk dancer in our cantina all the time for that purpose, and I'm afraid I'll be joining her when I am at work and have reached master. Why, one may ask, would I risk alienating myself from the musician community that way, well, because it's best for my PA . We live on Rori and, at least on our server, it would be very hard to find an ATK entertainer on rori during the day when I am at work. They would have go shuttle to naboo, find a musician, get a buff and shuttle back, which would waste some of their buff time.
So do I afk macro, yes, will I whine if it goes away tomorrow and I can't? Not at all. I agree that maybe it should be taken out of the game, but I'm taking advantage of it now while I can. if a CSR comes by and asks me to stop , I will. Until then, I will continue to be AFK half the time (my ISP seems to kick me after a few hours anyway) and ATK the rest.
- No matter what is added to encourage attended entertaining, some things should remain just as they are while AFK, such as:
- You get XP based on flourishes, songs/dances, and instruments, it has nothing to do with AFK status.
- You can run macros for flourishes whether AFK or not with no penalties.
- Entertainment wound and BF healing is unaffected by AFK status.
- Nothing about entertaining should discourage the entertainer from talking with other people.
- Running a flourishing macro or being AFK should not result in the character being logged out.
- Any other bonuses or abilities added to the entertaining professions should only be possible while not AFK, and should be geared toward activites that people do without wanting to move around very much.
- No "click me!!" popup boxes, they make it harder to socialize.
(Sorry, I'm not reading through 10 pages, call me a lightweight. But I'll read through this one.)
Oversight99's points about lighting effects are dead-on. 1. They serve no purpose other than looks 2. They cost too much/don't cost less with more skill 3. We don't have enough freedom when using them.
I'd also like to add that there just aren't enough of them, and they don't apply very well to all songs. When you're playing rock, SW2/3, etc they look great! But I don't want to do an exciting lighting effect while I'm playing Ballad or Virtuoso, it's just not fitting. They need to add a few more that perform more subtle, soothing effects. Perhaps even a light-dampening effect, making it a little more intimate in the room.
NewJedi said:
I'd also like to see instrument quality matter in the buff.
This is a big issue that I feel strongly about. I'm going to write up something I guess, as another thread. But I wouldn't mind seeing some bonuses to instrument quality. The problem with this is, if someone's going to be able to make a very good instrument (99% quality or so) then they need to not only be a master musician, but they also need to be a master artisan (or close) in order to have a high number of experiment points. I would much rather see a more complicated modular system put in place for instrument creation, rather than requiring two totally unrelated professions for well-made instruments.
Though, I suppose that if instrument experimentation were a separate skill, and experimentation on instruments had nothing to do with artisan-related experimentation, and musicians gain instrument experimentation skill as they gain instrument assembly skill, then this issue would be solved.
I'd like to see a little bit of random bonuses thrown in. Perhaps a chance that you won't expend action when flourishing while not AFK.
Isn't it easy to defeat AFK detection? Some keyboards even have macro capabilities built into them...