Musician Archive
Thread: bandflourish
Hi
Is it true when you do bandflourish, the only person that gets the musicianship is the person starting the bandflourish? If that is so, that should be changed because its great to have everyone doing the same thing in the group. Somtimes people just dont know how to play at all and it sounds horrible. I have to spend a lot of time to get the higher skills, would be much fun group flourish-sounding good-and entertaining those that watchthe band do somechoreography
Oh, lord no, this is NOT a bug. This is EXACTLY the way it is intended.
In Beta, bandflourishing used NO action and gave everyone in the group full XP. What this meant was you'd find 10 Entertainers in a Cantina, 9 of them AFK and one person just hitting a very long bandflourish macro every 10 minutes. The other people were sleeping or doing other things instead of being in the game actively taking part in their advancement. They weren't even socializing, which is the true point of an Entertainer.
Bandflourishes only exist to make the band sound united at sporadic times - it was never intended to be the end-all be-all of Musicianship. It was never intended to a be a crutch that people leaned on to get easy XP.
Coordinate with the other people in the band! Hand off the Bandflourishes so people get equal XP. Sure, you won't get as much in the same amount of time, but you will sound good. A way that I do it is that each musician has a 4 or 8 bar Bandflourish macro and we play it, then we use spacial to hand it off to another Musician. One night we had a laugh thinking of creative ways to "pass the ball". XP was slow, yes, as we only got it when we were the leader, but we were having fun and that's really what should matter most.
That being said, it does need a bit of work. Now personally, I don't think using different flourishes sounds terrible. In a Real Life band, you don't see everyone playing exactly the same notes at the same time; each has his own part. As long as we're all playing the same song (which is forced now), it all sounds good.
The problem is very simple. Using /bandflourish effectively requires the entire band (except for the /bandflourisher) to sacrifice all their XP, while depleting their Action pool at an even faster rate. Oh sure, you can take turns, so now all six of us get 1/6th the usual XP. This still might as well be zero. Or, we could try to arrange alternating individual bandflourishes, but if we could coordinate that well we wouldn't need /bandflourish in the first place! That's why the command was added.
Now, XP isn't the reason we take the class, and /bandflourish is nice when you and your friends decide to put on a nice show. But for the pickup group in the cantina? Not a chance.
Musician is a grind, although not nearly as bad as it was in late beta (twice as much XP per box, at 1/3rd the rate... *shudder*). Look at the XP tables. It's going to take a LOT of playing to get to non-horn instruments. Unless you go for Master Entertainer (Mandoviol) you'll have to wait until Music Knowledge 2 (Bandfill). At 12 XP per tick (because you WILL have to drop to SW1/Rock occasionally) it takes 10 hours to get Music 4, and around that again to get Novice Musician. A bit more for MK1 and MK2. So, that's several DAYS of nonstop flourishing to get to these instruments. At 4 hours a night, you're looking at two weeks spent in the cantina.
(That assumes someone learns the Technique skills to BUILD the instruments, so even if you race there you'll still have to wait).
Is ANYTHING that slows down the XP rate by a factor of 6 a good idea? I was in a pickup band the other day, and someone decided they didn't like how each person did their own flourishes. It sounded good to me, but apparently it was too chaotic for some. They immediately started /bandflourishing, and were then surprised when some people complained. Apparently, we're being antisocial if we dislike this.
Bottom line, it's a tool for you and your friends when you put on a specific show. It's not a general-use thing.
By the way, I have a useful command if you don't want to be bandflourished by someone else: /bandflourish off.
You will stop accepting band flourishes for the duration of that song. However, it doesn't carry over to the next song you start playing.
I'm going to try and get a band to try this out tonight.
Another useful tip for those of you that are more interested in the performance rather than the XP:
/bandflourish 3 fizzz;/bandflourish 7 slitherhorn
That will accomplish the exact same thing that was described by xyleen and SW3. :> You can bandflourish specific instruments to play different flourishes instead of having everyone play the same flourish.
or the other way around, i forget, but you could never get that doing a bandflourish. Its ok for those lower level songs, but the higher you get the more ascthetically pleasing it will be to have coordinated people playing their own version of the song. Right now XP is the goal for most so flourish macro's will run rampant until then.
I like bandflourishes every now and then. I think its good to have everyone sync up in one good move. I keep bandflourish on and let people know that they can do them, just do not be excessive. If they do it often, then I just turn it off. Easy.
The best part is when you sync a flourish with someone else without ever bandflourishing.
This "only the person who leads the bandflorish" thing totally sucks. Yes, I understand why it was done. But it was not the right way to do it.
The day they implemented this, twice in one day I ended up in bands with people who think that hitting bandflorish continuously is the way to gain maximum XP. And it is. For them. And it absolutely guarantees, if they do it long enough, that nobody else in the band gets any XP. Why? Because if the florish queue fills up, it won't let us perform solo florishes!
Look, what you really wanted was to stop AFK XP? Fine. Make it so that you don't get XP if you're really AFK. However, /florish and /bandflorish shouldn't be the only things that cancel the AFK for the purpose. Typing in chat should. Waving to other people. Turning around. Anything that requires mouse or keyboard input should be enough to prove that you're still there and should still be getting XP!