Musician Archive

Any discussion of crafted items that perform entertainer healing services must also bring up the question of the healing XP associated with it. We'd have to assume that either there would be no entertainer healing XPgeneratedwhen a device was used for BF/mind wound healing, or that the XP would go to the crafter who made it the device.

If there is no ent healing XP gained by device use, everyone loses out. No one gets any of that hard to come by experience.

If the crafter that made the device gets the XP, then up to 19 other people lose out. When someone in need of ent healing comes into the cantina, there is generally a lot of bonus XP being generated there. Remember that the XP is not divided amongst the entertainer group involved with the healing... all members of that group gain. If a patron watches an ungrouped entertainer, one batch of XP is generated. If that same patron watches a group of 20, then 20 times the amount of experience is being generated for the entertainer community, as all group members get it. Looking at it this way, it is likely that such a situation would, rather than discourage AFK in cantinas, instead prolong the amount of time that those who are AFKing need to be there to get all that healing XP they'd bemissing out on.

The alternative, of course, would be to then do away with entertainer healing XP altogether. But, to do away with that, we must acknowledge that entertainer healing is not a part of our skillsets. If it isn't a part of our skillsets, then there is no basis for entertainers having those game mechanics in the first place, and the concepts of BF and mind wound healing by entertainers must also be abandoned. Abandon those, and there is no need for the crafted items...

Economically speaking, things get even worse. I don't thinkanyone will argue that in crafting, it takes money to make money.Only those who could afford to start up this production business could hope to compete... and with a tip of the hat to the healing XP considerations above, how would Novice Entertainers ever be able to become Novice Musicians or Dancers without the capital to go into business as healing XP crafters? If we were to make these devices only craftable by Novice Musician, or even Master Musicians, does that not in turn (as shown above) stymie the ability for future generations of musicians to gain the healing lines required for those skills?And one would have to ask... if they were particularly interested in being crafters, would they not have started out as Novice Artisan?

This could inturnbecome a means of cornering the entertainer healing XP market through credits. Combat players would buy the most effective/least expensive crates of EntHealing Datadisks available. Any crafting musician that could afford to put out the better crafted product for the lowest price could essentially form a monopoly on entertainer healing XP... even if they were capped on it. In the pursuit of profits, they would be robbing the rest of the entertainer community of thathealing XP, which ishard enough to come by as it is.

Andhow would quality of such devices be determined? Perhapsthe Instrument Assembly skill could come into play, becoming like experimentation points? Then only those who could afford to buy +25 Instrument Assembly SEA's wouldsee any regular purchases, as they would have the superior product - just like we see withthe other crafting professions - thus reducing the number of beneficiariesof such a system even further.Even amongst those few that rose to the top of the Crafting Musician profession, all of that would come down to who had the most money to put in.

Deila Karlossi , Blue Glowie of Dancers, and become more powerful than you could possibly imagine...

Musician may have a sort of "crafting" line in making instruments, but musician is not a "crafting" profession any more than dancer is.

Now admittedly, there are people who choose musician for different reaons, but I think it boils down to 5main ones:

1) artistic(Likes to do performances)

2) social (wants to use the game mainly as a roleplay/chat)

3) healing (wans to have a skill to share with guild/group members)

4) badge (expect to vanish after publish 10 but you never know)

5) service vendor (highly dependant on ability to AFK and macro, uses profession for cash cow or as slave to main character)

Entertainers need an audience, and if you give people even more ways to avoid having to be that audience, the entertainers willl RARELYhave a chance to perform, heal orchat with other players. My guess is only a small percentage of players HATE the idea of social down time in a cantina, and that there are also only a small percentage that ENJOY it.. Everyone else probably falls somewhere in between--they dont mind "hanging out" in the cantina or starport for a little bit during each play session, especially when they're trying to figure out what adventure to go do that day, who's on, or what other "gossip" is on in the galaxy. That said... if you give every playeran excuse not to go to the cantina-- they'll go there less and less.The same way if you allowed NPC's to sell composite armor, weapons and food--very few players would then "choose" to deal with a player character vendor over the NPC (assuming the goods were of equal quality). Yes some would still buy from players...but out of convenience, those who really only play the game to hunt (whether PVP or PVE) would end up going with the NPC goods. So most reasonable players will admit that while the shopping downtimeand cantina down time might at times be an annoyance, those experiences can sometimes be fun, and whether or not they are fun , the down time is needed for game balance tomake the crafter game and entertaining games work, creating a broader player base, allowing the game to have some variety.

The unreasonable players will say they don't care about the crafting or entertaining games, so they should be able to avoid it as much as possible using whatever means necessary, regardless of how unbalanced that makes the game.

Anyway, giving musicians things to sell is not necessarily a bad idea, but giving them something to sell because you think this will help filter out those who hate socializing from cantinas is bad since it will filter out MOST people not just those who hate cantinas. It would filter me out anyway.

But as musician isn't my class, maybe I'm thinking about what those of you who do play the class want the wrong way.... maybe more of you just picked musician to be a different type of healer since there were so many doctors around, or thought it would be a good way to make money, not because you really want to socialize or perform. In that case, then the idea isn't really a bad one...but it does make musicians more of a hybrid crafter (the way smugglers and doctors are) than well, an entertainer.