Musician Archive

This message is addressed to Holocron (Raph Koster), the big honcho at SOE and formerly the creative director for SWG. I'm posting a copy of this in the Correspondent Forum.

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Holo, I know you were particularly attached to the idea of entertainers. The whole gameplay style was probably your idea, if I had to guess. So to you I ask: Would you please hire a dedicated Entertainer programmer! Someone who's job is to completely revamp and improve gameplay for entertainers. Someone responsible ONLY for Entertainer, Dancer, Musician, Image Designer. (I wouldn't even include the new Acrobat, if that profession is coming, since that profession sounds as much like a combat profession to me.) I'm sure you know that we've been neglected for 11 long months now -- not even one new song or dance in that period. Sure, we'll get a handful of new songs sometime in the next few months, but that's not an acceptable rate of growth for our profession. You know that. SWG does have a talented and hard-working dev who already works on entertainer issues; this is not meant in any way as a criticism of him.He's just spread way too thin.

I know it's going to take a while to train a new programmer to get up to speed on the SWG code. Well, we entertainers have nothing if not time. We won't see our new song(s) for months, to say nothing of the Hutt Casino, and neither of those developments will amount to the structural change we really need to make our professions robust and fun to play. We need much more content. One suggestion from today's forum traffic, profession-specific quests with meaningful rewards (not just the 500 credits reported from the new auditions), would be a start. But I have in mind a broader, more fundamental rewrite of our profession. A thorough effort to combat AFK'ing, perhaps with some effort to eliminate recursive macros. A completely revamped gig-mission system. A top-to-bottom rewrite of the fragile buff code, so as to give us a more reliable buff, a better buff UI, longer buff duration, and a self-buff. A more integral role in the GCW.

In particular, I'd like to see a more flexible approach to performance, and more gameplay to the core function of performing music. Pushing a few flourish buttons periodically is only vaguely like actually making music. I know that copyright precludes our making our own new tunes. But a clever programmer could give us many more options with the tools we already have. We need more engaging core gameplay if we are to combat AFK'ing, and if we are ever to give up the addictive macro'ing that has infected our profession.

Most of all, we need an in-house person who lobbies only for US. That person would surely see that Musician is, above all, about music -- about many more songs. Not just a half-dozen new songs. Several dozen new songs, so that we have a huge repertoire, one that will allow us to pick and choose what to play for a gig. One that actually might inspire requests. Ideally, our dedicated dev would have some background in performance (music or dance), and might exercise some creative input on the creation of new songs. I for one would love that kinda job (though I ain't quitting my day job, Holo). Work on the buff code in the morning; get together with session musicians in the afternoon; hang out with the motion-capture folks the next day. That would be an attractive position for someone with coding skills and interest in music or dance.

Yes, it would cost money. But SOE has shown it's willing to devote resources to important game components when need be. Entertainer is an important game component -- just as important, I would argue, as Jedi. There are currently many more Entertainers in the game than Jedi, and that situation won't change for a while, at least as I understand the nature of the Jedi quests. Having played a Jedi a bit on TC2, I can affirm that I won't stop playing a Musician just because Jedi are more accessible now. I might play an alt Jedi, but it's not inherently more interesting to me than Musician. Well, than the potential Musician has.

Anyway, sorry this is so long. Holocron: please hire us a full-time Entertainer dev!

-- NewJedi, Musician Correspondent