Musician Archive
Thread: Master Musician, Mandoviol and Ceremonial, working of Master Musician
Look, it boils down to this - Master Entertainer has to have a "hook" that makes it worth achieving. What should that "hook" be?
Look at the dancers. I don't remember the exact distribution months after the fact now, but I'll go out on a limb and trust my memory that it waspopular1and popular2and maybe exotic1 and exotic2 that were originally slated to be under the ME umbrella. The dancers cried long and hard about it. That distribution meant that you worked your way up through entertainer to make novice dancer for what? So that you could then earn the same dang dances over again as variations. Coupled with the lack of flourishes (until recently, 5-8 were the same on nearly all dances) It sucked, plain and simple. The designers relented and the dance lineup all up and down the entertainer/dancer trees were re-allocated again to the current state of affairs.
Why the history lesson?
Most entertainers, even those in the basic entertainer class, think of themselves as primarily a musician or a dancer. Let's have a show of hands of dancers that did the extra work to earn Master Entertainer. Okay, now the musicians. Hmmm.... If we did this poll in real life I feel confident that the results would lean better than 85% in favor of the musicians. The only dancers I know who mastered entertainment are the ones that were already planning to pursue both music and entertainment as elite professions.
It doesn't take any brains to figure out why. The "hook" for the musicians is a unique song and a unique instrument. The "hook" for the dancers is a minorvariation on two dances they already have. We don't even need to poll the image designers because there's no "hook" for them at all! Master Entertainer, as it stands now, is really a musician skill rather than an "entertainer" skill.
So, what happens when you remove the "hook" of mandovial/ceremonial? You can't just "copy" them over to Master Musician. All that will do is cause every Master Entertainer in the game to take all of those dance and image design skills and reallocate them to musician skills. What are you going to replace the "hook" with that the MM's won't then get jealous of because they ought to have every tune and instrument in the game?
What will the new "hook" be that will make it so that musicians, dancers, and heck, even image designers, will want to become master entertainers?
You just can't have it all, no matter how much you might want it. Something has to be reserved especially for the ME or you might as well not have them.
I'm really split on this whole issue. I think ME shoud have something compelling to keep it a special and sought after skill. I also think that it is somewhat frustrating that the only thing compelling in there really Ceremonial and the Mando both of which create this issue for musicians to spend the points to get ME but creates little or no incentive for the Dancer or ID to bother with ME effectively giving Dancers and ID 1/2 or 3/4 of a skill tree more skill points to work with in other areas than musicians. This does seem a bit unballanced overall. It would be nice to see something in ME that was truly compelling on it's own that didn't appear to detract form any one of the 3 entertaining elite professions. I do not think that a good solution would be to add unique dances(as opposed to variations of available dances) or some unique ID ability in there just so all 3 entertaining professions are equally encumbered skill point wise to be truly complete in their professions.
I remember in beta when all of the entertainment professions were rearanged right before release and exotic was pulled from the ME slot for the same reasons that a lot of musicians want ceremonial and the mando taken out of there. Sadly, right now the equivelent to what the dancers have in there for a musician would be the traz and some new flourishes for SW3.
what would be the point of mastering entertainer without bonuses?
the mando is an awesome instrument, it is there to encourage people to master entertainer for its benefits
if you want to remove the benefits of being master on the premise that you don't want to do ID or dancing so you can have the mando or ceremonial, then on that same premise people shouldn't have to master scout and marksman for bounty hunter, or marksman and unarmed for commando, or.. or... well you get the point
they are just bonuses there, i think its good for them to stay
My word is this still alive
Welp I feel I'm one of the few who are still fighting this fight.
The shame of it all is I could really use the Appr points. The overhead Appr point wise to our profession is crazy.
Game is full of shortcuts. I'm confident this issue is, and was caused, because of a shortcut. They just didnt know what to do with ME. So Dancers and musicians gave up some skills to ME.
Dancers got lucky cause that dance isnt no big deal, already got Formal 1.
Whereas musicians had the best song and one of the best instruments taken to fill and empty class before the rush to go live back in June.
I'm very curious what they do with DE's and Battle Droids. For I find it somewhat similar.
Funny reading old posts
hehe i love necro posting, i just heard a lot of people wanting this change still so i brough the subject back up
Blackrock wrote:
Funny reading old posts
Interestingly the same discussion is happening on the dancer forum. It's a shame that people always go to the musician or dancer instead of entertainer, as I see many of the same threads on both forums. There are people, however few, that want to get the dances. And being master entertainer makes dancers fall noticably less. But since everyone uses the weapon exploit anyway nobody cares.
But I digress..
What Master Entertainer should be has been a top issue for entertainers since the beginning. With some love coming our way in the near future, perhaps it is time to revisit the issue and figure out exactly what people want.
Edit: Oops, forgot one comment I was going to make... Penalties and bonuses are the same thing under different names. It's a glass half-empty/half-full thing. If you look at it that you have nothing, then every skill box is a bonus. If you look at it that you should have everything, then every skill box removes a penalty. When I was in junior high, we had a fundraiser. It was a contest between students of the various years. There were 3 jars, one for each year. Students could add a penny to a jar to give a bonus of 1 to that year, or a nickel, dime or quarter (Or dollar, some extended it to mean) to any jar to give a penalty to that year, equivelent to the denomination. Whoever had the most points in the end was the winner. It occurred to me quickly that if you want one year to win, adding 5 pennies to that year is the same as adding a nickel to BOTH of the others, and was cheaper. Of course people being competitive and not wanting to do math and all didn't see it this way and liked bringing the others down while bringing their own up.
Message Edited by Tiaga on 05-20-2004 06:21 PM
It's funny how people have been arguing about the same thing over and over for so long.But a good thread to read.
I like that post saying that nobody is claiming there isn't a bonus for mastering entertainer. I disagree! Isay there isno bonus, rather, there is a penalty for not mastering entertainer. A Bonus would be something like +10 to healing skills and musical mind enhancement. I know I would have no probems with keeping master entertainer if we were given these bonuses! If I drop entertainer it just means I'm penalized by not being able to play a song, which doesn't really affect anything, other than not being able to play with a band at a wedding or something, but I lose no bonus to my skills--so no big deal.
Our situation is like having a master pistoleer who gets to wear a gunman's duster if they master marksman, but mastering it has no real affect on their skills.