This is a vision of a repeatable entertainer mini-game that is designed to give entertainers an incentive to log in and play as well as give them a chance to get their hands on great rewards that are usually available only to combatants. It is inspired by Poet dancer’s splendid "The Tour," a Simple Entertainer Game by Sirii Ajaan, though I have devised it to create a challenge to entertainers, while being rewarding and fun for at-the-keyboard performers and their audience alike.
I. "Road to Coronet" - A concert tour
1. General Outline The entertainer visits an event promoter NPC. That NPC tells him about a tour consisting of a series of concerts/festivals called the "Road to Coronet" the Holonetwork is planning to holovise in preparation to to the bog concert "Live at Coronet Starport" and is still in need of a headliner/band. There will be a short audition first, similar to the one in the entertainer quests, which will also serve as an easy tutorial for the concerts to come. Once this is successfully completed within a certain error margin, the performers will get a waypoint to their first gig, which will take place in a random tavern on one of the outer rim planets. After successful completion, one will be sent to perform at a random cantina. In succession, one will be sent to perform in a random hotel/casino and with a successful concert there, the performer will be slated for a performance at a random theater. In case all of the concerts have been performed without any mistakes, the performer will be rewarded with an invitation to perform live at Coronet Starport, in front of hundreds of people. When one has successfully completed the tour, or if the entertainer fails to complete a performance withing the error margin, his/her progress will be cleared and the entertainer will have to re-visit the event promoter NPC to audition for another tour with a series of holovised concerts. + It will generate nice content for entertainers. + This will give entertainers something to do when logging on and nobody is in need of buffs + It will allow entertainers to do
2. Performance As each performance is a holovised event, there will be a choreographer. You will have to listen to what the choreographer tells you to do via system-message cue, doing flourishes and specific emotes as you are told to. The choreographer’s cues will be random to prevent afk macroers from doing the missions. The frequency, length and variation of these cued flourishes and emotes will increase with each venue you perform in. At the audition, the entertainer will have to perform for 2 minutes, at the tavern for 5 minutes, 8 minutes at the cantina, 10 minutes at the hotel/casino, 12 minutes at a theater and, if applicable, 15 minutes at Coronet Starport. (times may be tweaked to acceptable levels). While the time of the performance increases, failure tolerance will be the same, so you can make the same number of mistakes at each venue, but the time and frequency you have to perform will be higher, so it will be harder to successfully complete the performance to the Holonetwork Choreographer’s liking. In case you manage to complete the whole series of concerts without a single mistake, which will be challenging but not impossible to do, you will be invited to perform on a festival that will be holovised live from Coronet Starport. + This will pose a challenge to entertainers + It will also give incentive to play the mini-game over and over in order to be invited to the big live show at the Starport. + Random cues will prevent AFK entertainers from completing the quests and gaining rewards + It will be great fun
3. Audience participation While there will be plenty of NPC Audience spawned at each gig that watch, there will be incentive to have player character audience as well. Since these are holovised events, the audience has to look good as well, so the choreographer will give the audience in the venue system-messaged cues that require the player audience to do certain emotes on (clapping, cheering, applause, headbanging, thumbsup, sighing and more). The frequency and variation will also increase with each new venue the entertainer performs in on the tour, making it a challenge for groupies and simple performance attendees alike. Each correct emote by an audience member will grant the performers a monetary reward bonus and a perfect (or near-perfect) use of proper cued emotes of the audience member will allow him or her to get an item reward from the same reward pool as the performer (see section 4.). + This will encourage the audience want to participate and cheer the performers on + It will reward the performers for having player characters as their audience + A better atmosphere and more fun will be created for performers and audience alike, while not forcing performers to play in front of players
4. Rewards For the successful completion of a performance within failure tolerance, the performer will receive a certain amount of daning or musicianship experience (depending on the type of the performance) and will be paid a guaranteed amount of credits that will be roughly a standard entertainer mission payout. The fixed payout will double with each venue. In addition to the fixed payout, there will be a bonus payout for each skillbox the performer has in entertainer/dancer/musician/image designer. In other words, the more skillboxes one has in entertainer professions, the greater the payout will be. With a master entertainer/master dancer/master musician/master image designer getting the highest bonus, while a simple novice entertainer will get the smallest bonus. There will also be a small bonus for performing in groups, where everybody will get a chance to do a solo once in a while (thus not having to do group flourishes all the time and preventing band members to be afk). In addition to the payout in credits, after each successful performance within the error margin, the performer will have a choice to pick a reward from a list of the items (similar to the veteran rewards list). In case the performance was flawless, the performer will be granted an additional item reward out of the same reward pool. These rewards will be high-end rewards similar to the loot that Bounty Hunters get from their marks. This will include, but not be limited to Smuggler toolkits, good clothing attachments, bounty hunter armor schematics, krayt dragon pearls and crystals as well as entertainer-specific rewards like new instruments and props with entertainer modifiers, new dances, music and more. The quality of the reward items will scale with each concert. While the rewards will be of a medium quality for completing the first concert (quality pearls, clothing attachments, props and instruments with around +10 modifiers), after successfully performing live at Coronet Starport, the rewards will be perfect – clothing attachments, entertainer props and instruments with guaranteed +25 modifiers, flawless Krayt dragon pearls and more. Also, for successfully performing live at Coronet Starport, each performer will be awarded a badge and a special platinum Holorecord of his/her performance with their name on it as well as a cool tour jacket with a “Live at Coronet Starport” logo on the back. + These rewards will give entertainers a chance to gain rewards and credits similar to what combat professions get + It encourages formation of bands + It rewards entertainers with higher skills + It will reward entertainers for completing the ultimate challenge
Like all my posts from my "Vision" series of ideas, this post is a work in progress and I plan on updating it to improve on it when new ideas come up and to reflect major changes in the game amongst other reasons to change the post.
I would like to know your thoughts and suggestions so I can improve on the 'vision', so feel free to chime in and discuss this vision in a constructive manner!
Something like this would be good for us to have. In fact, any system-driven "meta game," or "mini game," will be good for us. This one is a bit more sophisticated than mine, but it serves the same purpose: to get entertainers logged on, and performing.
That's the key. Because right now, we are too strongly dependent on the composition of the playerbase to have a fun game to play at all hours, and in all conditions. This is even more of a problem now, as we do not have a very strong function to facilitate, like BF, and mind wounds.
Madame Sirii Ajaan August 2003-September 15, 2005 "There is a difference between being /watched and being WATCHED."
Sounds like a decent idea. Here are my initial criticisms:
- Choreographer cues -
I would suggest not having them as system messages. Entertainers get a lot of messages from flourishes and bandflourishes (and experience? I don't know, I've been maxed out on experience), I would think that the cues might get lost in the clutter. Maybe the cues should go in something like a chat window?
More cue ideas: holoemotes, switch instruments, visual effects, move to a different position, face a new direction.
- Rewards -
Some of those high-end rewards seem a little too good to me. Flawless pearls? +25 skill attachments? I know it makes sense if you want to balance it out with combat content, but geez. People aren't guaranteed to get these items when they kill the right mobs, even if they fight "perfectly." This is just my opinion, though.
Other rewards: pets, clothing, differently-colored instruments, furniture (or schematics of each)
- Group participation -
I think it would be nice to give groups better rewards. The choreographer would give each player individual cues, and would also issue bandflourishes, thereby making the performances more complex and difficult. Bandflourishes don't always provide the best flourish combination. Perhaps only groups should be able to get the ultimate high-end rewards?
That's all I gotta say now. Your idea is already good as-is, though.
= Andrew
Chilastra.Palacek
"There's nothing to talk about, Becky. I'm ugly, boys don't like me, and that's it!!"
