Musician Archive
Thread: From your correspondent: Top issues for Musicians
Thanks for the responses, so far, folks. Keep em coming!
Sweatyclimber, I have indeed read that thread on Composition and related ideas. I'd encourage Ekhben and other contributors to that thread to post their ideas, in order of priority, here.
Great thread and good start. Welcome NewJedi...some old some repeated, some new
1) /bandtip. I cannot see where this is an issue with anyone. If the person is pleased with the band in general, they would use /bandtip, otherwise they tips individuals.
2) Variety of sounds in instruments...or at very least spread the different kinda of sounds. woodwind, brass, woodwind, brass, woodwind...then bass, brass, base etc....low end is the same, high end is the same...a spreading out of sounds would be nice.
3) We all want more songs. I am sure it is on it's way. Perhaps song can be earned by doing very difficutl gig missions...
4) Gig Mission meters, much like our Skill Meters. This would be a huge help, especially to noobs who would otherwise sit on the waypoint for hours with no dice. Took me and from what I have read a lot of other quite some time to figure it out.
5) A reward for reaching a certain amount of musicianship apprentice points. This will keep masters training.
6) Remove the ability for ommni's and nara's to be stolen.
7) "Special" Instuments that can only be crafted by using say a specific wood fromEndor and a Metal from Talus. This will keep Musicians travelling so they can bring their expertise to other locations helping the profession grow
8) Provide a reward for having a certain amount of Musicianship apprentice points in different locations. (example 300 in dearic, 300 in coronet, 300 in mos espa etc). Perhaps even have the formula secret.
9) Have a reward to a musician who has trained every level in the musician skill tree and all the musicianship and ent healing skills in the Entertainer tree.
10) Bouncers...to deal with all the stupid that happens (CH who brings in his bantha and drops him in the middle of the band for the laugh).
11) Have 2 levels of leadership. Leader and Bandleader. Only Bandleader can stop entire band, and has to be annoited by Leader. Sometimes the leader is a dancer who is usually got his/her attention elsewhere.
All in all I think in general musicians would be a lot happier if they were given insentives to leave their local cantinas and earn stuff they find valuable abroad. It would open up the galaxy to them, give them different perspective. As well bring training to the locations that haven't such a strong musical presence to help the profession as a whole. Currently there isn't anything more important that getting all the needed XP to become a master.
I agree with most of issues raised here. I have another to add. Band flourishes could use some love. Either give all members XP for band flourishes or have a way for band members to ignore them.
Another idea I had was to extend the follow command to work within a group of Entertainers. All the dancers could choose to follow a lead dancer. The woodwinds/horns could follow one person, the strings another, and the percussionists yet another. And you could still have soloists. This would be great for putting together performances at the Theater for example. The leaders pick the fourishes and the other members of the section follow along. But horns and strings don't have to do the same flourish. And percussion does not have to flourish at all providing a constant musical theme to the performance with the occassional solo thrown in there.
There is a lot of potential here. I can't wait to see what comes of all this.
Ok here is my list of the top 5 issues.
1. Different sounds for every instrument. You have to work so hard to get a new instrument to have it end up sounding like a beginning instrument. We need variety in the sounds. Also in this category split the bass and percussion sounds between the bandfill and omni box. Bass for the Bandfill and percussion for Omni box.
2. /grouptip command that a customer can use to split a tip between group members but dont make it a option that all tips are split. Some people still want the ablility to tip thier favorite entertainer.
3. Fix bugs on existing things like the /startband /stopband commands. Also the targeting while using Omni box or Nalagron.
4. More songs. More songs would be nice to have.
Those are my top 4 issues.
I'm reordering Hijo's here cause he's got the same issues as me but in a different order:
1. Option given to either band leader or customer to split tips between all band members. This command needs to either affect the whole group or not, and should not be given to each person individually or it will cause resentment to those that aren't splitting while they are taking a share of everyone else's tips.
2. Get a statement from devs that the mandoviol and ceremonial in master entertainer has been tested thoroughly and is now "working as intended"
3. Get a statement from the devs that not being able to "deny services" is working as intended
4. Change timbre of duplicate instruments.
Further down the list and definitely into the suggestion range are these:
5. Music xp on the Nalargon after becoming master? What's the purpose, clarify this with the devs.
6. Instrument decay? a possible addition that i know was discussed in beta. Allows for new profession: instrument repair. Perhaps just one branch of a tree (similar to the tech side of the current musician tree). Then experimentation and quality of resources will have an effect. The decay must be very slow. also I don't think that you should lose your instrument due to decay, at least not within the time period of the game, perhaps in several in-game years.
7. a petition board so I don't have to wade thru petitions on the dev board.
I suggested it there but no love.
"Either give all members XP for band flourishes or have a way for band members to ignore them."
/bandflourish off is in the game.
About instruments and giving a different sound to each. The problem is... each instrument plays different parts. When you hear a band with members playing a bandfill, naglaron, mandovial, slitherhorn, and kloo horn and flourishing you realize they just can't add anymore without making the songs sound bad. Someone mentioned changing the key for other instruments. Perhaps you could raise or lower some an octave but keep the same notes?
There are a few musician-specific suggestions in this thread:
forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Development&message.id=95260
Just try to ignore the tip vs. no-tip flamewar that flares up near the end.
Some of my suggestions:
* Instrument crafting should add more to the profession. Make the quality mean something (more music xp, better healing, reduced action cost, etc); although I'm still undecided on instruments decaying. I do like the little bit of music xp I get for making an instrument, any chance on adding use XP (if it's not there already, it's hard to tell)? Or the ability to make a "tenor/alto/bass" slitherhorn, although that might have some technical issues depending on how the music data is stored in the game.
* Also, how about instrument "power-ups": mutes, amps, valve oil, etc, with the same type of effects as I've got for the quality. Give them a lifespan of 4-500 flourishes. Maybe a rare (or high-level) one could even allow a player to do a song 1 or 2 above their musicianship level. That might need to be limited to only the entertainer songs, though.
* Composing tool: be able to write "sheet music" using existing song flourishes. Right now, the "Composer" title gives me a bit of an ironic giggle because we can't really compose anything. Sure, I know this can be done with /band or by pre-arranging flourish sets in group chat, but I'm looking for something with a bit more immersion. I'm thinking of something like this (put togetherfrom my thoughts and a bunch of ideas I've seen on the boards): starting at Novice Musician, you can use a composing tool (crafting schematic also obtained at novice) to put together a short song. The composing can be as simple as picking a base song, thendraggingflourishes and rests by measures (completely bypassing the ever-changing /pause command). This creates a "song schematic". The band leader (or maybe the schematic has to be shared with everyone) activates the schematic, and the players get a karaoke-style prompt, which they have to execute. This will allow easier coordination without the xp loss you get from /band. As you get more skilled in Music knowlege, you can do more things in the tool: longer songs, integrate effects, embed lyrics, instrumentation (i.e. slither get's one set of prompts, fizz another), maybe change the song key, etc.
* Bigger gig missions for higher-level musicians. Maybe there's an off-planet bash that pays more, or one that requires a certain size band (or made of up certain instruments), and you have to get there in 2 real-time hours. Heck, maybe the Emporor needs entertainment for his big Life Day party, and anyone caught playing SW1 gets Force-lightning up their slitherhorn. 
And I don't know if professionbugs fall under your domain, but the musician gigs continue to have a Type of "Dancer". This is only a display bug in the mission details window; completing the mission is still done through playingmusic.
A comment about /grouptip vs /tipsplit.
I love the /grouptip idea, and I've seen it on enough different boards thatI hope it gets implemented. However, I'm very opposed to any automatic /tipsplit command by the group leader.
Imagine if you will....
I'm dancing* in the cantina with the band. My buddy shows up for a rifle Ipicked up for him earlier. I give him the rifle, but he left all his credits in the bank. So instead, he tips me 5k.That 5k automatically gets split amongs the band. Doh!
*Ya, I'm a dancer. I read the musician boards, cause I care about you too. 
- 2.5 of the 4 disciplines of Musician are dedicated to Entertainment Healing, when an Apprentice Musician heals mind wounds and battle fatigue plenty fast enough already. It feels very much like "filler." Is this profession for people who want to be Musicians, or is it for people who want to be Healers?
- More diversity. The identical sounding instruments are an incredible disappointment.
- High end content. Once you've Mastered Musician, what do you do? Putting together flourishes is fairly limited.
- The Mandoviol and Ceremonial. I really like the idea of putting things like Juggling, Fire-twirling and Tumbling at Master Entertainer. I really dislike having Dancer-specific and Musician-specific things gated by so much non-related stuff.
- Player Cities.
And thank you, NewJedi, for taking the job and hopefully getting something done to give us all a richer experience.
Hello again folks!
Ok, top five things to improve our class.
(1) Fix the /changeband bug, that thing is flat annoying.
(2) Fix the ability to invite a player already playing a song, into the group, and them continuing to play a song that is not being played by the group. Make it so that a new member is forced to stop playing when invited into a group, and that solves that one.
(3) Would love to see a /tipband command as well as theoption to appear on the radial,I would hate this to replace /tip, so just an addition, because we all know that some Musicians/Dancers/Entertainers really try and work the crowd and have a great time, while some just play and are AFK half the time, if not more.
(4) New idea here...hold on to your hats....As we all know, even though there are some really great people in the game that really tip well, the majority of people don't tip us enough so that we can afford to buy new clothes, a (small) house, new instruments, and heaven forbid, training! Don't get me wrong, even if I am only given 50 credits, I will still give an enthusiastic thank you to whomever tipped me, as some folks really don't have a lot to give, so thats still not a concern about peoples natures.......so.......how about if they implemented a feature that would work only in specially designated places, such as a cantina, tavern, hotel, privately held homes (That are not declared residences), the Theaters! , where by you would actually earn an income. Say 1000 - 2000 creds per every 2 hours? So that in addition to tips, we might actually be able to play our class and not have to go out and slaughter innocent animals/people running destroy missions, or run the, IMHO, very boring fed ex missions, just to afford that novice musician / dancer training / instrument / new outfit. Ok, giggle and point all ya want, i think its a good idea.
(5) Get the Speakers / Mikes that are seen all over the place working. IfI understand it correctly, with the use of a Speaker, you actually broadcast your songs in a radius so that folks don't have to actually /listen you?
(6) Yep, gonna keep going past 5.... A unique sound for every instrument.
(7) New songs / instruments
(8) New special effects
(9) /stopfight command that is only usable by Master Entertainer and higher. Ever been in a Cantina when an opposing faction rolled in and they just slaughtered your entire audience. Might be part of the game, but it costs me loss of revenue for a while. And the victors actually sit and watch you, but then never tip. Whats up with that?? Well what a great way to make em "take it outside" because it would cease all hostilities and force the would be assassins and or (rowdy and most of the time obnoxious) fighting classes, to either wait out the time limit ( which the time is a seperate thing entirely), or move outside and blast/slash/kick or punch all they want
(10) the ultimate /tip command...... /tip (name)Durney (server)Lowca (amount)10000 (bank command if needed)
Ok, there ya have it......
Durney Kova - Master Entertainer - Master Musician - Lowca
P.S. No animals were harmed in the making of this post, but my Droid who was doubling as a type writer ran out of power so I smashed it into a million pieces, which by the way was unintentional as I barely smacked it to try and get it to work just a little longer, but somehow that little slap, basicly caused him to explode 
Must be faulty armor.....
The couple of issues I have run into are:
1. The start and stop band should only be available to the band leader.
2. Bandflourishes should give everyone exp.
3. The /grouptip is really needed. I had a guy tell the group that he was going to tip me and I could split it up. Well, he left without tipping and the group thought I was scamming their credits.
4. I have only run into the "continue to play" once but it needs attention soon.