Musician Archive

Here is my suggestion:

With the Imperial Crackdown, I think it would be great to see the Stormtroopers thatraid the cantinas shoot and kill all AFK entertainers. Make it the AFK Crackdown. Would certainly make AFKinga lot lessattractive when you wake up in the cloning center with 500 other AFK entertainers standing around with decayed stuff.

I wrote up a long-ish post on this subject, but I thought I'd include something here, just because I know it'll get read here. This is the original thread:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=musician&message.id=9838

In short, the affect that AFK musicians and dancers have on other entertainers and on the community is so miniscule that it shouldn't even be a concern. With the exception of the buffing ability. So, to prevent AFK buffing at all, and to reward those who work hard at being an in-demand musician or dancer, this is what I propose:

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Buff Window: Performing a set for someone (buffing) should involve active participation from both parties, but not to the extent that it infringes on socializing.

• /setperform should activate a window that indicates current targets of your character's buff, with a timer next to their names, counting down to completion. (Or a segmented progress bar, whichever is easier.)
  
  
  
  • This will highlight your target in red if they are not /listening or /watching, to prevent the buffing of targets who are incapable of being buffed.
    
  • /setperform only adds names to the list, it does not begin the buff. In order to start buffing, you must highlight the names of the targets and click the "start" button. Adding a name to the list with /setperform does not require them to be listening or watching.
    
  • At the end of the buff, you must again highlight the names of your targets and click the "complete" button in order for the buff to take hold when your targets /stoplisten or /stopwatch.
    
  • If your target types /stoplisten or /stopwatch before you've clicked "complete" for them, the only effect is that their buff timer stops. The buff must be completed before /stopwatch or /stoplisten will activate it.

Fame score: Buffing other players should provide a temporary skill reward to the entertainer, to encourage an entertainer to put out some effort and really get to buffing. This comes in "Fame" points.

• Each successful buff performed by the entertainer (triggered when /stoplisten or /stopwatch activates the buff on the player) gives the entertainer abonus to their mind enhancement skill in the form of 1 Fame point.
  
  
  
  • Each Fame point equals 1 point of mind enhancement skill bonus.
    
  • This bonus should allow the entertainer to complete a buff faster and provide better results.
    
  • The bonus should bleed away at a rate of1 Fame pointevery three hours, in real time, online or off.
    
  • Overt faction entertainers earn 2 Fame points for buffing overt members of their faction.
    
  • There is no limit to the amount of Fame points an entertainer can earn, but there is an effective cap ofa +50 bonus to the mind enhancement skill.
    
  • Every2 Fame points applya 1%instant buff for the entertainer's audience. As soon as they /listen or /watch they receieve the bonus, but only while being entertained.

Slag, Heph: I suspect one thing Holocron-chasers and long-term Musicians agree on is that replacing with Holocrons with a new Jedi quest will be good for the game. I say that as someone who is *both* a Holo-chaser and a long-term Musician.

Bihlbo: I like your fame idea a lot. I've read other fame proposals, but I likethe idea of tying it to something concrete, like the buff. Personally, I'd like to seesome "post-Master" goal to workfor besides improvements on the buff. I'd likefame (oreven just plain old post-Master Musician XP) count toward getting an NPC band "pet". One pet per 500K Musician XP past Master. Eventually we'd have people walking around with their own orchestras.

Message Edited by NewJedi on 02-16-2004 02:09 PM

Here's the idea why I hate the concept of having NPC entertainers, even if you've earned them: Players should fill this role.

Players should make up every chair in the orchestra, they should be every star in the ballet. If you add in a feature that allows entertainers to replace fellow bandmembers with NPCs, then you're essentially telling entertainers that they're better off going solo. I agree that there needs to be more post-Master content, but I strongly disagree that NPCs should be used as entertaining pets.

I don't understand why so many people have a problem with an afk entertainer, I have a second account I use for entertaining profs and if you wanna make it so they don't get to heal when afk fine do it, cause then you'll have plenty of people complaining they're not getting healed because there are no entertainers anywhere but the major cities. Don't get mad if your profession is easy to master and someone else can heal just as easily, I don't macro begging for tips or heals or anything like that so don't assume all afkers do that. You want to make people stay at their comps more? fix it so musician and dancer can each buff the three mind stats instead of splitting them up, cause getting mind buffs is practically impossible unless you have one as a second character or give it to the doctors, combat medics can heal mind why not give musicians and dancers something else cool. If you don't like that someone else is macroing fine, go around offering to buff and don't make a ridiculous price. I say if you want to do those professions then that's something you'll have to deal with,I dont' complain that you guys never die and get to talk to people all day while I faced with the risk of my armor decaying just so I can master mine. I gotta say I wouldn't want to talk to you people in the cantina if you're as angry as you are in these forums about afkers.

I haven't read this entire thread but so I'm sorry if I repeat anything anyone else has said.

My suggestion to get entertainers to remain at their keyboards is to give them missions to entertain at a particular cantina to earn cred, significant cred based on their healing ability.

But the details of that mission is they have to play a game in which they have to perform a sequence of florish moves. The moves they have to perform should pop up into their screen and they have a few seconds to perform this move. Each particular florish sequence should be random.

The longer the performance they have to perform the more credits they earn.

That's my suggestion

To all who do not like AFKer's talk to the. devs about why they say the game isnt loot based or exp grindage ala EQ. Then look at the game and the Force Crystal farmage. Then look at the Jedi unlocking system. They messed up by forcing people to master professions that they dont want to do in order to do something they do want to do. Get rid of pointless silent holo profession grinding by TELLING the player what they have to do and you'll see a dramatic fall in AFK'ers over all servers. FLAME ON! hehe human torch funny

I am an entertainer with a handful of the music/healing skill boxes. I only have these for one reason- mind heals for my guild. I afk play for 20 minutes when they show up with 400 BF. I do this because I would go crazy watching my character perform a flourish every 5 seconds with nothing to do- so I run my macro (which announces on guildchat that I'm afk playing in the cantina for mind heals) and alt-tab out and read news on the internet. I don't see anything wrong with this, because we have no dedicated entertainers (except holo grinders) and our cantina never has anyone who entertains atk since the only time people are in the cantina is to heal thier mind.

If you want to stop AFK play, make the entertainers heal faster/require less xp to master, because the only reason people afk play is healing hundreds of points of bf takes a while and the xp takes forever and a day.

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Bihlbo wrote:

Here's the idea why I hate the concept of having NPC entertainers, even if you've earned them: Players should fill this role.

Players should make up every chair in the orchestra, they should be every star in the ballet. If you add in a feature that allows entertainers to replace fellow bandmembers with NPCs, then you're essentially telling entertainers that they're better off going solo. I agree that there needs to be more post-Master content, but I strongly disagree that NPCs should be used as entertaining pets.

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Well, entertaining pets aren't my first choice for more post-Master content either, but I still like the idea. We may have to agree to disagree on this one. FWIW, the devs have shown absolutely zero interest in entertaining pets, so the point is probably moot.

I personally like the idea because Musicians are increasingly rare on my server. I rarely get to perform with other Masters, and thus I rarely get to play high-level tunes other than solo. To be sure, there are still some very fine Masters on my server, including several who post here in these forums regularly. In my case, I've become very focused on my Player City, so I tend to hang out at our local cantina, playing with lower-level Musicians, or playing solo, or buffing. There are times whenI wish I could "call" a drummer and saxophonist and spice up my act. I especially feel this when I'm buffing, which I usually do solo.

All that said, I agree that I'd firstrather have epic quests, entertainer-oriented POIs, better gig missions, some Musician role as quest-giver in a cantina (sweatyclimber's idea, I think), and other engaging post-Master content. But that stuff has sure been slow to come, and the devs have given no sign that it's coming any faster.