Musician Archive
Thread: Revamping the musician buff system (and more)
Currently, our buffs are incredibly weak and difficult to give. Not only do they take about eight minutes (without the new chef food) to apply, but for all that work, the max buff attainable only doubles the stats. What’s worse is that people don’t have to even be at the keyboard now to pass them out… at no charge. Thanks to a handy new macro spreading around, AFK buff bots may now be available at a cantina near you! Given these factors, for a musician in here to play the profession, it makes it virtually impossible to turn a profit. On top of all this, I personally, cannot take pride in the buffs I give: They’re the same buffs every other musician at my level can give. Compare that to the doctor who can take pride in the enhance packs he’s able to create and you’ll see where I’m coming from.
And therein lies our problem. We have no consumable items like doctors and chefs, and the quality of the equipment we use makes no difference in our line of work. I’m still using the same set of instruments I created the first time I mastered the profession. I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I certainly don’t enjoy sitting in a cantina passing out the same old buff all day long. I would love to see a system that would allow me to offer a competitive edge to others offering buffs, and to do this, we’re going to have to do a bit more work… Which I would do nothing but welcome.
Here’s the system I’m proposing. Get ready, it’s pretty liberal:
First, the Musical Mind Enhancement skill needs to be moved from the Technique line to the Knowledge, Wound Healing, or Fatigue Healing line; or distributed throughout all three. (The buffers need to be separated from the crafters. I’ll explain this further later)
Second, the quality of an instrument needs to matter as well as a new stat, its tuning. The quality of the instrument would account for the buff’s duration time and range of randomness while the actual tuning would affect the strength of the buff and perhaps the speed of wound and fatigue healing. This is where tuning kits come into play. Tuning an instrument would be applied after its creation and would range between 0 – 1000 in tuning quality depending on the quality of the tuning kit used and the expertise of the musician tuning it. Over time and usage, an instrument will slowly degrade in tuning, providing poorer and poorer buffs/healing.
Tuning kits would be available in types ranging from A – E like doctors’ enhance packs, and would be usable based on your character’s Mind Enhancement skill like a doctor’s Medicine Use skill. For instance, using Tuning Kit A’s would require +10 Mind Enhancement allowing for a novice musician to tune her instrument. Tuning Kit E’s would require between 90-100 Mind Enhancement to use, but would consist of the highest quality tuning available. Tuning Kit schematics would run along the Techniques line up to type "D" and give type "E" at Master Musician. Resource requirements for tuning kits should resemble, to an extent, the requirements of doctor packs. To further balance this, re-tuning an instrument will slightly degrade its condition. The more massive the amount of tuning done, the more it degrades, but the higher the musician’s level is, the less its degradation. This would have no affect on the buffs or healing, but once the instrument reaches zero condition, a new instrument will need to be purchased. This will keep the market fresh and allow a musician to feel real pride in both the instruments he builds and the buffs he can offer. Here’s how the entire process would work from start to finish.
A Master Musician acquires materials to make an excellent Traz. After experimentation, she ends up with a Traz with 93% quality. She continues by creating a Tuning Kit – E using only decent materials and gets a kit of 824 tuning quality. She uses it to tune her newly created Traz and lands a lucky 840 tuning stat on it. As this is the instrument’s initial tuning, it does not degrade the condition. This is an exceptional quality Traz and she sells it at a nice price to a brand new Novice Musician. This instrument would be best suited for a musician with a mind enhancement skill of about +80 to +90 because of its high tuning: The Novice Musician with a +10 enhancement skill is going to offer negligible buffs, but the 840 tuning will turn those negligible buffs to the utmost range of his ability. As the Novice Musician plays, the tuning of the instrument will diminish, and at a faster rate than it would if a higher level musician were using it. Should it fall below 200 tuning, it would be in the Novice’s skill range to re-tune it as he can use Tuning Kit – A’s that can range from 1-200 tuning quality.
This would open up entire new markets for musicians interested in crafting the finest quality instruments, musicians wishing to give the speediest healing and musicians wishing to give the finest quality buffs. (On par with doctor buffs)
Note: To translate this over to dancers (because we musicians can’t get this without them getting something similar) we’ll need clothing specifically designed for dancers along with dancer certifications for it. The clothing would include a similar stat system or something resembling it.
Now, concerning cantinas, theaters, and hotels…
At the current time, there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever for theaters and hotels to exist. To create a meaning for these structures, here’s what I propose.
Cantinas: For aspiring entertainers offer a slight bonus to experience. Buffs given here will suffer degradation in quality. The healing speed is normal.
Hotels: Entertainers receive normal rate of experience. Buffs given here are of normal strength. There is a bonus to healing speed.
Theaters: Entertainers suffer a penalty to experience gain. There is a bonus to buff strength. Additionally if a group of three or more masters are performing, the audience can be buffed to the average tuning stats of the musicians’ instruments. The healing speed here is reduced. (Thanks, Ronfar, for the ideas here)
Another Note: Player theaters need to be functional. The outdoor arena look is nice, but make it an indoor theater if that’s what it has to come down to.
All of this, combined with the new chef foods coming out to decrease our buff times, should make the musician’s role in the game much more meaningful to play and competitive. I apologize for the length of this and thank you if you’ve read this far. Please share any comments, questions and criticisms you may have. I’d really love to see musicians and the entertainer professions move to a level higher gaming than just the visual and sound effects they provide.
~Caihsk Ahxi'lya - Chilastra (And getting back into the Music business)A lot of interesting ideas here. A question and a comment or two:
1. Why couldn't instrument quality do the work of the "tuning" in your proposal? I have suggested to the devsthat instrument quality affect the speed with which we buff, and they at least didn't reject the idea out of hand. 
Wouldn't a wholly new characteristic take longer to code? I mean, I like the idea of a "tuning" quality, but can't we tie the buff to crafting with the existing quality system?
2. I'm all in favor of making the buff more than 2x stats, but I don't agree that it's "weak." With that mind buff, my fighter alt can heal nonstop and never lose his blue bar. He's a master marksman, currently working on UA 4, and he's also done CM and master medic in the past. The musician buff has always been enough for him. Is it that Riflemen or some other blue-intensive class needs more than 2x?
3. FWIW, I can buff in six minutes.
Anyway, I enjoyed reading this proposal. Obviously a lot of thought went into it. Comments, folks?
FIrst off, thanks for responding, RIcky.
As for having two separate stats rather than one. I feel this would provide another layer to it. While you would be able to tune an instrument to give stronger buffs, the only way to get longer lasting buffs is by purchasing a better quality instrument. (This, of course, is only an example. Buffs could be affected vice versa or to certain degrees of each stat) I'm not sure how much more coding this would involve, but back at release, instruments did have two different stats: Quality and Durability. Whether it'd be too difficult to implement a tuning stat is beyond my knowledge, but why not? Sure, it could all be done with one stat, but thisadds another layer to the system, especially for those that wish to craft them. It's also got an RP element in it in that the schematic could be run through a factory, but the tuning has to be done by hand. *shrug* A nice thought, I guess.
I guess I should have modified "weak" to say in comparison to those offered by doctors. And maybe this is all just part of my sublliminal scheme to make a good composite helmets less worth the investment, (I hate seeing these things on every character trying to stay alive in PvP) but mind/foc/will buffs on par with doctor buffs would be something I'd like to see. Even at 2X, Mind stats are the most vulnerable pools, and most targeted in PvP. 2Xis not much compared to what the Health and Actionstats can be.
Another thing about the 2X buff, is that it's the same thing everyone else offers. Maybe I'm way off base here, but wouldn't it be cool to see one of your customers leaving the cantina saying "Woah! Excellent musician in here just got a 2.4k foc/willpower buff on me!" To me, that'd be much more rewarding to me knowing that people appreciate me as the musician and not just another musician in the crowd. Of course, we could also land a really bad buff every once in awhile... But at Master, I doubt it'd ever be much below the 2X marker. Of course, I'm not saying we get all this for free. A system like this would give us much more to consider and would incur work on our part to keep instruments in top knot shape. We'd consume more resources, but thebenefits, even if it only gives us something other than perfroming to do, would give us something we could take more pride in.
Ithink the current length of time it takes to apply the buff is acceptable, and will only be better with the new chef food, but for the strength of the buffs it gives, is just too much. But you share a different stance on that, so I see where you're coming from.
Kammots-Ahazi wrote:
I created a buff bot for the fact that I only need techniques. Buffs work fine. I didnt go spam your cantinas while working it. Give us people that want the buffs a break. You honestly can not use an entertainer as a sole means for making $. If they change it.. then I will have to change my char around and as immature as this is, I will be sure to give away free buffs everywhere to make sure that people realize this is not a money maker. Sorry for sounding like a little brat but cmon now, I dont want to have to run all over hell to try to find an entertainer to buff me. They are all afk anyways. Thats why I created my char.
*pours self in gasoline*
hmm not money makers? then why do i make over 100k/day doing them? as for your "i will be sure to give away free buffs..." so what your saying is to "get at" the devs your going to try to destroy other players game? I would have to agree that IS immature. And just so you know not ALL entertainers are afk... you will find most on these threads are not and i have a whole pa of over 30 ents that are never afk and litterally on at all hours... oops so what real argument did you have?