Musician Archive

I finally made it to master musician on Flurry server, and to sum up the experience it was a long and arduous grind that was not much fun at all. I only persevered because I made it about halfway before I reached the end of my tolerance and I wanted to see it finished to vindicate myself for all the time I'd spent up to that point.

In my opinion the Entertainer/Musician/Dancer profession line needs a lot of work. Setting aside the moral issues surrounding the ATK/AFK argument.... I would like to say that in my opinion:

THERE IS NO WAY TO MASTER MUSICIAN OR DANCER IN A TIMELY MANNER WITHOUT RUNNING AN AFK MACRO.

By AFK macroing, I don't mean stepping away to take care of some basic needs, or even an hour or two hours. By AFK macroing I mean starting your macro and letting it run by itself, unattended for an entire day or an entire night. Or "just checking up on it" to see if it's still running or if you need to train a skill. Even if you don't AFK macro, you're ATK macroing.

The nature of the profession itself DEMANDS that you macro flourishes and doesn't reward you expwise or otherwise for being ATK versus AFK. A profession where the best way to perform the skill is not to be at your keyboard but to leave a macro running... that just doesn't seem like a good game design to me. Maybe the devs could address the logic behind this one?

FurthermoreTO MAXIMIZE YOUR EXP YOU NEED TO DO TWO FLOURISHES EVERY10 SECONDS. There were some times that I felt a bit creative and didn't go for max exp gain, but most of the time I had my /pause 5 delay between each. This often is not enough time for the flourish animations to finish up in musician and rarely is enough time in dance. So, to get maximum exp, toget better at our profession, we have to do a bad job of performing our goal of being "entertaining"? What's with that?

Playing a Nalargon or an Omni Box is a nightmare if you're really ATK. You can't even rotate or move the view around for fear of untargetting your instrument and stopping. If it wasn't boring enough being chained to one spot in a cantina for hours and hours, even days in order to get exp, now our already dull view of the cantina interior is restricted further to a view of our instrument...

Another oddity of the profession, though this one is going away.... Levelling up Musician Wound HealingSPEED UPour ability to apply the Inspiration Buff.... which LOWERS the time they're forced to watch us and gives us less exp in return? Huh? What? By being better at our job we get less of a reward? I don't get it....

And on top of that a Novice Entertainer can perform the same function as a Master Musician, it just takes slightly longer... where's the good in that? The longest it takes to apply an inspiration buff if you're watching a novice entertainer isn't more than maybe 2 minutes. The only time it takes longer is if you're watching or listening to yourself.... what's the benefit in all this forced levelling up if we're not able to perform USEFUL tasks SIGNIFICANTLY better?

Okay, NOW I'll ADDRESS AFK MACROING..... Honestly, it wasn't much fun when six or seven out of eight people in my entertainer group were AFK. I would normally talk mostly to other entertainers since I could use group chat in the InstantMessage window. I had a filtered chat window that removed system messages, but even so there was so much spam normally that conversing in /say with patrons made it hard for both of us. Other than the boredom factor, I didn't care one way or another if someone was AFK macroing. We all do it at some point, we're forced to... customers don't care, they just want the buffs and BF healing, so ATK/AFK doesn't matter to them as long as they get their fix. AFK is better for them since they don't feel like they owe the performer a tip or anything. I might considering booting an AFK person if someone showed up ATK that wanted into my group... but not often, since EVERYONE GOES AFK EVENTUALLY, so the fact they were ATK now just means that in 5 minutes, or 30 minutes, or an hour or whatever, they'd be AFK too.... and so would I... so would all of us....

The thing that really kills it is AFK SPAMMERS. The game literature and the newbie quest with Trehla and Allura (or whatever the names of the newbie quest NPCs in Mos Eisley are now) should emphasize that people should seek out cantinas and performers and /listen or /watch to get buffed, and that they should tip. Having someone spamming it every minute or two in their macro for hours or even days at a time IS NOT NECESSARY AND DOES NOT BENEFIT ANYONE. Just take out /say /yell /sing /rapand every other emote from macros. I cannot possibly think of any useful condition where someone might need an emote or say message in a looping macro. Let them type it themselves. Heck, let us have a 30 letter long permanent message floating over our head that says "tip me! I need the money!" We can already register our location we don't need to yell it out. Everyone knows to find a cantina for entertainers.

IT'S NOT THE AFK THAT BOTHERS PEOPLE IT'S THE AFK SPAMMING THAT BOTHERS PEOPLE!

Anyway, that's it... I've said my bit. You won't have to listen to me again! I love the Star Wars universe and love the potential that SWG has. I am not sure I like the game and not sure it lives up to what it could become. SOE seems determined to give it second billing, but to me the Star Wars universe will always be the best.

- Amanti - Master Musician on Flurry (retired)