Musician Archive

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Chessack wrote:
/nod Aleyo

I have never seen a case where a musician was desperate for a new instrument, at least not after the fizzz (since you don't GET a new instrument, at least sound-wize, till the Ommni after that anyway!).

C

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Either way, the point is that after Props 2 of entertainer, it is boxes and boxes before you get the next new sound. The instruments in between (Fanfar, Kloo, Traz, etc) are exactly the same in sound as the first two.

If the sounds were different instrument buffing might be more useful, but as it stands now, once you know the 2nd box, you're done until much later, and buffing will let you play the same instrument with a different graphical appearance.

On the other hand, if you are song-buffed, you get whole new songs you could not have otherwise played.

I still say that is better.

C

None of the above. I worked hard to get master musician and master entertainer. Prior to the CU I ran MM/ME/MTK for months. After the CU I got a second toon and specialized it to combat and Elwyn to all entertainer but that was because of the CU because you HAVE to specialize combat now. They ruined combat with the CU and ruined mixed templates, don't ruin specialized enterainer templates by allowing dabblers to appear to have my skills. I not only worked hard for them I've kept them and built a reputation with them for many months. I'm known as a master musician who can play any song any time.

If you are going to give us a buff to increase our level then give it to everyone. Then the Jedi knights will be on par with a padawan and the master armor smiths on par with a non-master. Just continue to dumb the game down so no one has to master anything or better yet just put the blue frogs on live and let us switch and chose as we please each day.

Leave the master skills to the masters. You earn a level not buff to it, this is stupid.

I'm not against the instrument buff, primarily for the reasons I've listed previously; that I believe that most entertainers aspire to instruments sooner than they aspire to tunes. As far as "supporting" one view or another, I've been pretty neutral. Mandovial wasn't always a master entertainer instrument. It got stuck there between the end of beta test and the launch of the live game. In fact, the brouhaha during beta was that ME had a dance that dancers couldn't otherwise get, as I recall. Funny how things change...

Anyway, I had an experience recently that reminded me of some facts of newbie life. To keep it short, I played for a couple of hours the other day with one of those rare gems these days, a true newbie player. She was twinked to the extent that an in-game friend (a spouse or parent, I suspect) had given her credits and pointed her in the right direction but otherwise she was a blank slate entertainer-wise.

I whipped her up a slitherhorn and we started in on SW1 (outdoor stage, no inspirations). In roughly fifteen minutes, she went from 0 music XP to 1000 music XP and graduated to Rock. After something on the order of 45 minutes more, she graduated to Folk.About that time we switched back down to SW1 to accomodate a fellow novice, and she switched back over to dance after he left. After maybe another 30 minutes of dancing, she'd graduated to Item Usage 2, I made her a fizzz and a couple of props, and we parted company.

This showed me a couple of things that bear on the situation.

Firstly, XP at the low levels flies by pretty fast. Faster than it used to, apparently. Individually, novices aren't "locked into" SW1 for any great length of time.

Secondly, the disparity between entertainer XP and music XP is such that the novice advances up the music and dancebranches at a faster pace than she does up the item usage branch. The novice who "specializes" is going to be gaining songs at roughly 1.5 - 2.0 times the rate she'll be gaining instruments. Props tend to be one per box, so dancer progression in this regard is a little more even.

So, at this point it looks like the instrument cert is the more difficult thing to acquire and therefore the more valuable benefit to be had from a "play above your level" buff.

However, and most importantly - A novice can easily gain a cert in an item, yet the cert is useless because the novice DOESN'T OWN THE ITEM!

This last is the deal breaker, I think, and is the one that should be brought to the attention of the developers when discussing this topic. While Chessack's arguments are persuasive, this is what makes up my mind. A buff that lets you play an instrument above your level is useless if you don't have access to the instrument. A prop buff is worth nothing if you have no props and nobody is available to build them for you.

A song/dance buff is immediately useful and doesn't depend on any outside agency for its use. Make it a song/dance buff instead of an item usage buff. It may not be as flashy as an item buff, but it will bring a greater real benefit to the entertainer who has it.

Well here's how I see it.

The mando is one defining feature of master entertainer, just like vehicles are one defining feature of master artisan. Sure, master artisan has a lot of stuff in it, and the vehicles are only one thing.

Suppose you could be buffed so that someone with engineering 4 can now make vehicles during the buff. Is anyone going to spend the points for master artisan? Yes, the master artisan has access to these schematics all the time and the buffee only has the access during certain times, but really, that seems a bit irrelevant. And yes, the master artisan has access to different schematics, such as those electronic doodads - but really vehicles are the defining feature of master artisan, just as the mando is the defining feature of master entertainer.

And there lies the problem. The master box becomes trivialized because one of its features can be duplicated without actually spending the skill points - and, let's face it, getting a buff at the beginning of a play session is not a huge hurdle.

Honestly, I'm not sure a song/dance buff will be any better in this regard. Ceremonial does not have the same draw as the mando, but it still has some draw. I hesitate to see master entertainer content freely handed out and devaluing the master box, unless something else is put in the master entertainer box to compensate.

All of the other buffs increase experience or success ratios. No other buff actually boosts your abilities to that of another skill level. This is the issue I see. Once again musicians are singled out for something different from everyone else.

I really did work hard to earn master entertainer and master musician. I played for hours ATK to get those titles. The healing alone was enough of a grind. You earn skill boxes you don't buff to them. The buff gives an increase to XP which allows you to reach those boxes much faster, to me that is plenty. Especially when you rarely see musicians without dancers present so access to the buff is trivial.

As I said before if this is a side benefit then make it global. Let a novice rifleman use the T21 that previously only the master could use. Let the Padawan use force skills reserved for the knight. Let the novice artisan make vehicles. Then and only then will it be OK to degrade my skill set by allowing someone without that skill box use the tools from that box.

With the CU players benefit by having more CL 80 members in their group, so shouldn't they have buffs to temporarily boost CL? Thats the same reasoning you are using for why my skill set should be obtainable via a buff instead of by spending skill points.

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LyteFoot wrote:
With the CU players benefit by having more CL 80 members in their group, so shouldn't they have buffs to temporarily boost CL? Thats the same reasoning you are using for why my skill set should be obtainable via a buff instead of by spending skill points.

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You can choose to see it that way, if you wish. The only way to argue it is to talk about the "experience" of playing a tune in a full band as opposed to the "experience" of being one of many hunters in a hunting group. I contend that adding one more CL80 to your theoretical group of hunters might let them rake in XP and loot faster, but it wouldn't significantly affect the "experience" of spending an hour with the group. Conversely, adding that missing bandfill to a performance of Ceremonial has a signifiant and noticable effect on the "experience" of both playing with that group of performers and listening to them perform. Adding a line-up of torch dancers to a dance routine has a significant and noticableeffect upon boththe "experience" of dancing with that troupe of performers and watching them dance.

The fact of the matter is that the devs want the profession buffs to have multiple profession-specific benefits. What benefits do you propose that entertainers and their elite cousins derive from these buffs? We play music. We dance. We craft instruments and props. What else is there for the developers to work with? Do you really want a buff whose benefit is that you become a better buffer? Do you want a crafting bonus for a profession that can't experiment and cares nothing for the quality of its raw materials? What's left besides our performance skills and our item usage skills? If both of those are untouchable, then what's left but just the General 10% XP buff?

The devs aren't going to create a new game mechanic for us just so they have something to buff. We need to be realistic here. For instance, we may not have a choice about the instrument/prop buffs. Those two buffs are really a single Item Usagebuff that just has different effects depending on whether the recipient is a dancer or a musician. Music and dance knowledge, on the other hand, are seperate lines that might require individual buffs in order to make it work. The devs may not want to take the time to trash one buff and replace it with two new ones. They may not have the time or the inclination.

If you're going to insist that master content be excluded then you might as well just insist that we don't have any profession buffs at all for our professions.