Musician Archive
Thread: Forcing Musicians Out of the Population Centers.
This is coming from a non-Entertainer Politician. The intent of this post is not to "Troll" for flames, or insite a riot. Rather, to gather a clear understanding of the Entertainers point-of-view (POV).
As a Civic Leader, I am grappling with ideas on how to get entertainers into my citie's cantina. The PC Cantinas across all galazies are pretty much empty. The exceptions being the cities that are located around intense POIs. Mine is a city of merchants, primarily, with a healthy dose of shooters mixed in. We have plenty of entertainers who call the city home, but they seem to migrate to the various planetary hubs (cornet, theed, anchorhead and bestine)to get their experience and to hawk their skills.
I have toyed with the idea of an entertainer "payroll" where by the city would pay resident entertainers to spend time in the cantina. We also have a couple entertainer "Alts" that do a fair amount of AFK entertaining in the cantina.
But what I see as the root of the problem is a system that pretty much dictates that you, as entertainers, all bunch up in the big city cantinas. What if there were an incentive to spread out? Here are a couple of ideas, both reward and penalty based, for you to digest:
Building Codes: Have you ever noticed in some RL bars, hotel conference rooms, and school gymnasiums there is a plaque that diplays the room/structures maximum capacity? What if the cantinas around the planet had a similar "Cap?" Perhaps one for entertainers, and one for spectators. If the building was full, you would have to move one to another location. the CONS of this plan would be that during dead times in the game, the popular locations would still be the only place to go for mind heals and experience.
Salaries: Rather than have the mayor of a city manually pay out to entertainers, perhaps an automated system could be employed. A mayor could specify how much he/the city will pay per hour of entertainment, or perhaps per amount of damage healed. The mayor could also speciy how much he/the city is willing to commit to this each week. A dancer/musisian/entertainer could check the "employment terminal" in the cantina and see how much money is to be made. To ensure that there is still some activity in the NPC cities, the system could also include "mission/employment" type terminals in the NPC cantinas.
Experience/Heal Rate Caps: Perhaps a structure would divide the amount of available experience to be had from the spectators between the folks doing the entertaining. This would have the effect of the dancers competing for the attention of the patrons. The system already works similar to this. It would just get an adjustment to make entertainers decide to stay or go. There would also be a mechanism that would limit the amount of healing a patron got if too many folks were oggling the same scantilly clad dancer. The flip side of this is an increase in the Experience/Heal rates for PC Cantinas.
Once again, I implore you, please don't take this as a desire to NERF your professions in any way. I would only be in favor of a system that was mutually benificial to all, and had the effect of making our PC cantinas more inviting to you. I have also seen where much of this has been discussed in the past. Re-stating your position is welcome.
Message Edited by jemelby on 03-26-2004 10:13 AM
jemelby wrote:Building Codes: Have you ever noticed in some RL bars, hotel conference rooms, and school gymnasiums there is a plaque that diplays the room/structures maximum capacity? What if the cantinas around the planet had a similar "Cap?" Perhaps one for entertainers, and one for spectators. If the building was full, you would have to move one to another location. the CONS of this plan would be that during dead times in the game, the popular locations would still be the only place to go for mind heals and experience.
I think the salaries and xp caps have been discussed before, but this is the first time I've seen the Building Codes idea. I like the idea, but don't know how much effect it would really have. Having caps for both entertainers and spectators would definitely encourage the entertainers to find somewhere else to play, since they have to get xp from somewhere. But it probably wouldn't do much for spreading the spectators out to other cities. In places like Coronet and Theed, the afk-entertainers usually far outnumber the spectators. You'd probably see a bit of an increase in spectators in cantinas where entertainers migrate to, since there would actually be a body there, but the main hubs would still be where the most healing xp is gained.
A well written post J'Vee, with some good ideas, however I'm not sure they would neccesarily work. I'll explain why, but I don't want this to seem as a, "You don't know us, you wouldn't understand" sort of post. I originally mastered Entertainer and Musician on Eclipse in the first few months of the game. Back then I operated out of Nashal on Talus, a ghost town even on the most populated server. Now on my new server I'm working on mastering Musician as a secondary position, and the task is even more difficult. First you must understand that unlike most professions, our leveling is almost solely based on teaming with large groups.
I can't get buffed and go to the Nightsister's Cave and get "uber" XP playing alone. Instead I have to go to Coronet and put up with the zombie AKFers to get good XP. Before this wasn't a problem, as while there were AFKers, they weren't the bulk of the entertainers in a cantina. Then came the holocraze, the most crippling blow to the entertainer professions.
The final line, I think, here is this: If you want more entertainers to frequent your cantina, the answer isn't in game mechanics. The best way to get more people entertaining in your town is to make it more enjoyable to entertain in your cantina. If you survey the entertainer forums for just a little while, it'll become apparent that for a lot of people who used to love these professions that it's just not fun anymore. I mean, the other night, I managed to stomach about 20 mintues in the Coronet AFK Mind Heal Centre as the ONLY person at the keyboard before I just started to question my resolve. The PC cantina I play in now is often silent. I became a musician for the banter, for the opportunity to entertain, and I don't get those chances much anymore.
I have toyed with the idea of an entertainer "payroll" where by the city would pay resident entertainers to spend time in the cantina. We also have a couple entertainer "Alts" that do a fair amount of AFK entertaining in the cantina.
A "payroll" system has been tried by many PC cantina's I think, with varying results. Back before Player Cities were even a twinkle in a dev's eye, I had a large house that I set up as a cantina with a small entrance fee, and would pay other entertainers for spending time there. The catch with that really was that people tended more to come out and join us for the party aspect and the company more than the creds I would slide to them for their time.
Does this mean payrolls are a bad idea? Not at all, infact they are a decent idea, though I would make a suggestion. Follow me here, because this may sound a little ludicrous...instead of giving them creds (which gets expensive fast...trust me...) how about giving them something like clothes? I seriously have yet to meet a entertainer in the game who isn't a clothes addict. And yes, that includes the males as well. Both of my male toons have had so many clothes I need a small house just to use as a closet. (C:
Building Codes: Have you ever noticed in some RL bars, hotel conference rooms, and school gymnasiums there is a plaque that diplays the room/structures maximum capacity? What if the cantinas around the planet had a similar "Cap?" Perhaps one for entertainers, and one for spectators. If the building was full, you would have to move one to another location. the CONS of this plan would be that during dead times in the game, the popular locations would still be the only place to go for mind heals and experience.
Again, this takes away from an entertainers ablility to level. And yes, even those of us who are casual players that enjoy the ride up want to level. I mean, I get very excited when I finally get to play a new song or a new instrument, I'd say even moreso than a combat player getting a new attack. After all, they haven't been using the same attack for the last 20 hours or so of gameplay.
By instilling the building code command all you will manage to do is spread the mass of people in Coronet, Theed, the like, into the other structures where we can do our magic. So while there may be fewer people in the cantina, there will be just as many cramed into the theatres and hotels of the big city. On a side note, I think this would cause even more animosity in the entertainer community as people could "camp" the cantina, which would always be the hotspot.
Salaries: Rather than have the mayor of a city manually pay out to entertainers, perhaps an automated system could be employed. A mayor could specify how much he/the city will pay per hour of entertainment, or perhaps per amount of damage healed. The mayor could also speciy how much he/the city is willing to commit to this each week. A dancer/musisian/entertainer could check the "employment terminal" in the cantina and see how much money is to be made. To ensure that there is still some activity in the NPC cities, the system could also include "mission/employment" type terminals in the NPC cantinas.
See the above comments about trying to set up a deal with a Master Tailor in town...
Experience/Heal Rate Caps: Perhaps a structure would divide the amount of available experience to be had from the spectators between the folks doing the entertaining. This would have the effect of the dancers competing for the attention of the patrons. The system already works similar to this. It would just get an adjustment to make entertainers decide to stay or go. There would also be a mechanism that would limit the amount of healing a patron got if too many folks were oggling the same scantilly clad dancer. The flip side of this is an increase in the Experience/Heal rates for PC Cantinas.
I've always like the idea of adding healing modifiers to PC cantinas. But again, capping the healing XP in non player cantinas would just be cruel in my opinion. I would liken it to capping the XP gained off killing a krayt to get more people to kill durnis. As it stands there's not much reason for someone to kill durnis (unless they're leveling, and that's about the only thing they can kill...). The trick here is to make it more attractive to kill durni's without making it unattractive to go after krayts.
Now the big question is, how to make it more enjoyable for entertainers...and I think I'll let my fellow brethren take it from here. Hope I helped a little bit, and sorry I was so long winded...it's a bad habit of mine. (C:
jemelby wrote:
Building Codes: Have you ever noticed in some RL bars, hotel conference rooms, and school gymnasiums there is a plaque that diplays the room/structures maximum capacity? What if the cantinas around the planet had a similar "Cap?" Perhaps one for entertainers, and one for spectators. If the building was full, you would have to move one to another location. the CONS of this plan would be that during dead times in the game, the popular locations would still be the only place to go for mind heals and experience.
I have two characters on different servers. One is a combat type the other is my musician/chef/doc guy. There are two aspects to entertainment. One is healing mind wounds, BF, and Buffing. I would love to go into the player cantina near my town or near any town and find an entertainer and get healed. Of course these places are empty so I have to go to a big city where I know I can find an entertainer.
On the other side of the coin, as an entertainer to likes to play at my keyboard, there is no fun or enjoyment in playing at an empty cantina. I do play at player events that we get paid for. There is often a large crowd there watching us put on a show. There is little to no healing going on, but its a fun party atmosphere.
I don't think its too hard to get a group of entertainers to put on a show for a limited time. The problem becomes providing healing which needs a much greater window of time. Other than afk types, I don't think you will find people who just want toplay in an empty cantina for 3 hours.
You can have an event that creates a hunt around your town. You could then have entertainers play in the cantina giving buffs and healing people from the hunt, but just to have people on standby at a player cantina is not very fun. Even in the real world, nightclubs don't usually have live music 24/7. You need to build regularity as well. People need to know they can go someplace and count on it.