Musician Archive
Thread: This isnt EQ(thank god)
"See, this is the attitude I'm talking about. Newsflash - YOU may see us as vending machines that dispense mind healing. WE don't see ourselves that way. Not those of us who think of ourselves as actual entertainers."
I'm simply stating how many of the patrons ACT like. I too am a Master Musician and have had many excellent experiences chatting it up within the Theed Cantina. But it is NOT the sole purpose of my gaming experience.
I would like to aid in other aspects of the game as well though. I would prefer not to be limited to simply helping my fellow man within the confines of the Cantina. Why can't I have it both ways?
NRaas wrote:
I'm simply stating how many of the patrons ACT like. I too am a Master Musician and have had many excellent experiences chatting it up within the Theed Cantina. But it is NOT the sole purpose of my gaming experience.
I would like to aid in other aspects of the game as well though. I would prefer not to be limited to simply helping my fellow man within the confines of the Cantina. Why can't I have it both ways?
You can have it both ways. My question in return is "Why do you want to do it without paying more skill points for the abilities?"
What I'm hearing you say is "I'm an entertainer. I am only an entertainer. I want my entertainment abilities to do more than entertain."
This is no different than a Fencer saying "I am a brawler. I am only a brawler.I don't want to spend the points on dancing, I want my swordsmanship to automagically give me dancing skills too."
Nobody in this game is "only X". If you try to play it that way you'll be inevitably disappointed. Instead of lobbying for a change in the game to allow you to hybridize two disparate and conflicting skill sets, you should just bite the bullet and buy yourself some combat skills, IMO. Playing as "I'm X" means that you'll miss out on all the fun that goes with playing as Y and Z as well. It doesn't make sense to ask the devs to combine X, Y and Z just because you don't want to spend the skill points to actually be Y or Z. It certainly doesn't make sense to say "I'm only X" and not even spend available skill points on the skills that would let you do Y and Z.
Outside of a fairy tale, I've yet to encounter an artist that could charm an animal with her art.
"Music soothes the savage beast" is a very old phrase. And it's not something just cooked up. Of course, there's a difference between Lull and Charm, and I'm sure that applies to one's expectations of RL music.
1)Fighting classasking for healing skillto be added to their skillset
- Since the fighting class has no healing skills right now anyways, I can see adding it here as quite a stretch
No innate ability, sure. But everyone can buy factory crates of Stimpack Bs, and use them with just the Novice Medic skill.
2)Support classasking for an EXTENSIONto thehealing that they already have
- Musicians heal mind wounds, and cure Battle Fatigue... Why can't we extend this ability to heal mind damage as well?
I absolutely agree, and don't understand the omission.
A friend of mine raised an excellent point about PvP in this game. Two HAM bars have insta-fixes in ability and stimpacks. The third (Mind) is the only one that doesn't. Guess which pool those snipers should target. He made the a propos reference with early DAoC RvR. There was no counter for Mezz. No way to break it and no way to counter it.
Everything should have a mirror. When it doesn't it forces people to think along lines they don't naturally want to go just to compete. Forget uber. This is just being competitive. It also culls the amount of people even willing to try. Which is fine. PvP is by no means a central focus here, though it's cool when it happens.
NRaas wrote:
Those entertainers who are asking for the ability to help during combat just want to help the combatants more directly than simply being statues in a cantina where people run in, get healed, and run out.
See, this is the attitude I'm talking about. Newsflash - YOU may see us as vending machines that dispense mind healing. WE don't see ourselves that way. Not those of us who think of ourselves as actual entertainers.
This is why you see the polarization on this topic (and it comes up over and over; it's not anything new). The people who want to be bards are the people who are just there "to socialize" as you put it and who think that the battlefield is the central focus of the game. The folks who I'm referring as the "real" entertainers don't have the view. They're in the cantina/hotel/wherever because they want to ENTERTAIN. If you do a poll of those people you'll find that the vast majority have no desire at all to be "combat entertainers". It just doesn't fit.
If you think that we're all "statues" who dispense healing while people "run in, get healed and run out" then I can only say that you haven't spent much time around a cantina with a group of popular and talented entertainers in it.
In the end, it's NOT all about combat. If it was then I wouldn't be having people in Dearic "blaming" me for the fact that they were giving up part of their skill trees to pursue music just because I made it seem so fun. There's absolutely no good in-game reason to incorporate combat abiltiies (especially "magical" entertainment buffs) into the musician and dance trees. Entertainment is entertainment. Combat is combat. You can do both. You don't need to "hybridize" them in order to doit. That kind of thinking just goes along with the whole "I am one thing and one thing only and I'll never take skills that don't appear in that one thing's tree" line of thought. SWG is all about choices. If you want to be a combat entertainer then choose the skills that let you do combat along with the skills that let you entertain.
Caspearious wrote:
As for your comments,SlickRiptide, you seem to be under the impression that I want musicians to be exactly like bards in EQ.
No, I wouldn't say that. What I would say is that you haven't proposed any new skills that work in a "realistic" way with the Star Wars backdrop. Charming/Soothing animals IS a bard ability. Outside of a fairy tale, I've yet to encounter an artist that could charm an animal with her art. Buffing in combat is likewise a bard ability. Nobody listens to music or, worse, watches a dancer while they're fighting for their lives. As pointed out by another poster, music in battle has always been used as a way of coordinating squad movements. We have squad leaders for that sort of thing in SWG. Buffing in battle is out of step also.
My suggestions are as follows:
Make it so that musicians and dancers can reduce Battle Fatigue (BF) in a camp site. Make this to be like 5pct (or less) of the speed it would take to recover in a cantina and base it on musician/dancer skill as well as the level of the camp site. Maybe have it take about 4 or 5 minutes for an Master Musician or Master Dancer to clear just 100-200 points of BF or something on players and take more time for the lesser skilled musicians and dancers.
I actually don't have a problem with this idea as long as it's limited to masters. It should be one of the bennies of achieving that level of rank in the professions. I've also been known to support the idea of having a "stage" droid that would project a BF healing radius (and simultaneously give the Droid Engineers something useful to sell). It's a big balance issue, though, so I wouldn't expect to see it happen in the near future.
It might be nice to be able to 'buff' mind stats a little bit, while in camp, as well.
I'm personally ambivalent about this. There are foods and drugs for this sort of thing, but I wouldn't raise a protest if it was implemented as longas it was limited to the upper skill levels of the entertainment trees.
Mostly, what I object to is the attitude that so many non-entertainers have that we couldn't possibly be enjoying ourselves because we're not out there using our "main" abilities to kill stuff.
Nobody has replied to my "idea" about combat artisan. Why is that? What makes a "combat entertainer" an acceptable idea but not a "combat artisan"? I'd submit that the D&D bard that we all grew up with is the exact reason that we're even having the discussion. If there had never been a "musical" combat archetype in fantasy roleplaying then this discussion about a "combat entertainer" would seem as ludicrous as the idea of a "combat artisan" seems.
One of the things that sets this game apart is the fact that we ARE entertainers and not combat types that happen to have musical abilities. The designers went to a lot of trouble to make it that way. They aren't going to change that any time soon.
I'm a little concerned we're wandering around with a hammer looking for nails to pound.
I'm completely with Slick that people need to eschew the class mentality and remember we're in a skills-based game. If you want combat skills or medic skills or chef skills -- there's a way for you to have them, it's all about making a tradeoff in what you want to have vs. what you can have with the 250 skill point cap. This is an important point not to lose sight of.. there's no rule, anywhere, that says Entertainers can't shoot things... they can, pretty **edit** well too.
I think the issue of the non-healable Mind bar is definitely one worthy of discussion -- and probably on a thread in PvP rather than in the Musican sub-board on professions. That said, there's a whole lot of cans filled with a bellyful of worms when you start talking about this. Suddenly you find ways for medics to potentially turn themselves into massive infinite healers because the mind pool isn't the restriction it'd otherwise be. Anyway, it's a problem of game balance and it should be brought up that way... that's the right context to figure out the appropriate counter (should there be one)... here, of course the Musician is the answer to any problem we see -- we're musicians!
Like the others, I'm actually specifically against the idea of "combat entertainer" because it doesn't mesh with the Star Wars mythos. If it got me a bagpipe, I might not whine overmuch about the damage to the universe's canon, but y'know.. it'd be a tough call. I don't see that this is the right thing to do for the class and it just perpetuates the idea that Combat Is The Point -- and maybe it shouldn't be.
I am a fulltime Entertainer on Shadowfire (currently Ent Master, Planning on Music Master and Dance Master too). And I am glad I don't have to fight something to get there. Actually I don't want to fight at all.
It's a choice to be made, do I want to shine on stage or honour some combat abilities and only going for one Master in the Entertainment tree.
I am pretty sure there are enough skill points to do a good balance.
Fulltime Entertainer and Combat = no thanks
NRaas wrote:MikeSty
"However, dancers would of course have to get something equal. Videos? Uhh..."
That's why it was suggested that the recordings be called holographic (like the R2D2's Leia hologram). This way Dancers can use the same setup.
Like MP3 for music, MP2 for video, both are MPEG just different uses
Heheheh... that would be interesting. Although it wouldn't matter since you shouldn't have to actually see/hear it because it's an "insta-heal". Basically all you need is a playback device (Music = Craftable by novice musician, Hologram = Craftable by nov. dancer), and the recording.(or whatever it's called).
Eh?
Darniaq wrote:
"Music soothes the savage beast" is a very old phrase. And it's not something just cooked up. Of course, there's a difference between Lull and Charm, and I'm sure that applies to one's expectations of RL music.
Actually, it's "Music soothes the savage breast", referring to grouchy people. It's simply misquoted a lot. In SWG, music DOES soothe the savage breast, hence the whole battle fatigue thing.
Should mind damage be healable in battle? I dunno. I know music/dance wouldn't be the correct way to do that. You could imagine it being healed by an entertainer in a camp, but that would happen pretty quickly by itself anyway (barring someone totally messing over their willpower).
Medics are able to insta-heal TWO POOLS, in addition to insta-healing all six wound categories.
Although entertainers are able to heal BF and Mind wounds (four categories), they are NOT insta-heal.
This is why I think it would be fair for musicians/dancers to be able to make their music into insta-heal recordings. This will ALSO help Musicians and Dancers make a steady business. IMHO entertainers are the lowest paid proffession in the game since gig missions suck and their income relies strictly on tips... Instrument sales don't go to far either.
I don't think their should be insta-mindwound heals or bf heals, but instant mind damage heals should be a definate.
MikeSty:
"Yes, mind wounds should be insta-healable."
...
"I don't think their should be insta-mindwound heals or bf heals"
I suspect the former is a typo (you meant mind damage), though you should correct it before people jump on you 