Overview

Dancers and Musicians are able to perform in order to entertain and provide valuable services to their patrons. These services include the ability to give Mind buff enhancements, heal mind wounds, and heal battle fatigue.

Entertainer Features

• Dance Fundementals
• Music Fundementals
• Flourishing
• Band Commands
• Entertainer Healing
• Experience
• Deny Service
• Ability Modifier & Exp Values
• Instrument Crafting

Fundamentals of Dance

When you begin to dance, your most basic command is /stardance. This will bring up a popup window that gives you a list of the dances you currently know. To start a dance without the popup, type in /startdance + the dance name, for example:

• /startdance basic

After you begin to dance, you will be able to flourish your avatar, causing him or her to do various moves in the dance. There are eight possible flourishes per dance. You may flourish by using the command /flourish and choosing a number of 1-8. (e.g. /flourish 5)

To stop dancing the command is /stopdance After a player stops performing, they have to wait 3 seconds before being able to begin performing again.

/pausedance /pausedance Doesn't do anything but stop dancing currently

Changing Dances:

You can switch from one dance to another using the "/changedance [dance name]" command (when playing alone). You can leave off the dance name, and it will prompt you with a dance list. Example : /changdance formal

Dance Playlist

Fundamentals of Music

When you begin to play, your most basic command is /startmusic. This will bring up a popup window that gives you a list of the songs you currently know. You must have your instrument equipped before you may begin playing music. To start a song without the popup, type in /startmusic + the song name, for example: /startmusic starwars1

After you begin playing, you will be able to flourish your avatar, causing him or her to do various moves in the performance as well as changing the song's sound. There are eight possible flourishes per song. You may flourish by using the command /flourish and choosing a number of 1-8. (e.g. /flourish 5)

To stop playing music the command is /stopmusic After a player stops performing, they have to wait 8 seconds before being able to begin performing again.

/pausemusic pausemusic command will stop the sound of the player, but the player is able to still continue playing/gaining exp. If the player uses this while grouped it just means that their instrument is removed from the group track. If the entertainer is listened to indvidually, the patron hears nothing, but can still watch/be healed and such. The command is queued as if it were a flourish so it only executes when it comes up in the queue. When it is executed the silence will last for 10 seconds.

Changing Songs:

You can switch from one song to another using the "/changemusic [song name]" command (when playing alone). You can leave off the song name, and it will prompt you with a song list. Example : /changemusic starwars1

Music Playlist

Flourishes

Action costs for music and dancing abilities varies according to the song or dance played and instrument used. When playing music without using flourishes, a base amount of action points are used per tick. This base is affected by the player's action secondaries. When doing a flourish with any music ability the action drain for this is (base / 2). Dancing also uses a base amount of action however its flourish costs are (basecost x 2) per flourish.

You can stack flourishes and the action costs will be issued, but the flourishes wont execute until they finish animating in the queue.

Executing a Flourish

Spatial Log

The Performance-based professions are paired in Entertainer with Image Design. Image Designers can alter the features of any player avatar.

Queuing

Queuing in entertainer differs from combat queuing in that there is a preset limit to the amount of total commands that will be stored to execute. For music, the server will store up to 5 flourishes for execution. Any more flourishes performed by the player will simply use action but not be added to the queue.

For dancing, there is no possible queue. Dance flourishes are executed immediately. What this means however is that a dance flourish must fully execute and complete the duration before another flourish can be attempted. Once executed the performance will go back to the base dance unless the player immediately performs another flourish.

Dancer and Musician Effects

These commands are shared by both dancers and musicians.
Using the default command without parameter will automatically use the highest available effect. Ex. /spotlight  ; will use spotlight3 effect.

/spotlight /spotlight Uses your highest spot light effect

/spotlight 1 Overhead spotlights
/spotlight 2 Overhead spotlights with a flash on you
/spotlight 3 Overhead spotlights with a flash and falling glitter

/colorlight /colorlight Use your highest colored light effect

/colorlight 1 Overhead “disco ball”
/colorlight 2 Overhead “disco ball” with lights circling around you
/colorlight 3 Overhead “disco ball” with lights circling around you and falling glitter

/dazzle /dazzle Use your highest dazzle effect

/dazzle 1 Flying rings
/dazzle 2 Small burst
/dazzle 3 Large burst

Dancer Only Effects

/distract /distract Use your highest distract effect

/distract 1 Small explosion on the ground
/distract 2 Flash bomb around you
/distract 3 Overhead flash of color

/smokebomb /smokebomb Use your highest smoke bomb effect

/smokebomb 1 Puff of light blue smoke with sparks flying outward
/smokebomb 2 Puff of blue smoke
/smokebomb 3 Ring of explosions forming smoke

Musician Only Effects

/firejet /firejet Use your highest fire jet effect

/firejet 1 Ring of sparks
/firejet 2 Ring of small firejets
/firejet 3 Line of large fire jets

/ventriloquism /ventriloquism Use your highest ventriloquism effect on your current target

/ventriloquism 1 Use first ventriloquism effect on your current target
/ventriloquism 2 Use second ventriloquism effect on your current target
/ventriloquism 3 Use third ventriloquism effect on your current target

Fundamentals of Image Design

To begin an Image Design session, you must be grouped with the person you are Image Designing. Your most basic command is /imagedesign. This will bring up the ID User Interface (UI) where you will be able to tab through the various panes to view which things you can currently change about people.

Not all species or genders have things you can ID at first (the ones without hair or makeup options).

You may Image Design yourself by using the command /imagedesign self OR by keying CTRL+1 to select yourself and using /imagedesign Doing /imagedesign with no target will also initiate an image design session on yourself.

Alternatively you may imagedesign another player by targeting them and performing /imagedesign or by /imagedesign playername

Audience Commands

All patrons who /listen and or /watch performers in the same group, will get their Battle Fatigue and mind wounds healed by the group collectively. I don't think it's split between only musicians and only dancers, it's the group as a whole. The rate of healing remains the same whether a player watches a dancer or listens to a musician player within the band. Listening and watching will work up to about 60 meters. After this the player will be forced to stop listening/watching. A player may use the radials for up to 32 meters.

/listen /listen Start listening to your current target
/listen playerName Start listening to the designated player

/stoplisten /stoplisten Stop listening to an entertainer

/watch /watch Start watching your current target
/watch playerName Start watching the designated player

/stopwatch /stopwatch Stop watching an entertainer

Where can Entertainers practice their art?

All Entertainer skills can be used anywhere in the galaxy, but the performance-based Entertainers cannot benefit their customers everywhere.

You can heal Battle Fatigue, Mind Wounds and when you're an elite performer (at least Novice Musician or Dancer) you can administer Mind Enhancements (buffs) in:

• any player structure (player theaters on the backstage area counts)
• NPC city Cantinas
• NPC city Hotels
• NPC city Guild Hall Theaters
• NPC city Taverns
• Camps

Note on Camps: You can only heal Mind Wounds or administer Mind Enhancements (buffs) in scout or ranger camps. You cannot heal Battle Fatigue in one.

How can I prevent someone from using my passive services?

The command /denyservice will prevent someone from receiving benefits from your services. Keep in mind, /denyservice is a toggle. If you use it once on a person, when you use it again, the name will be removed from the list. This list does not extend beyond one playsession. Your /denyservice list is clean at each login.

Perhaps as a convienience, we should make this also an SUI window that can list the current players on the deny service list. This should also be stored in the database and also allow for the entertainer to add/remove from this list at will.

Band Commands

The band commands are /bandflourish, /startband, /stopband, and /changebandmusic (song). These commands allow performers to synchronize their performances. However, only those performing Music may make full use of them. /bandflourish will work for both Dancers and Musicians, causing everyone to perform the same-numbered flourish. Musicians can take it a step further by using /bandflourish (instrument) and cause only people using that instrument to perform the flourish. The band commands /startband, /stopband, and /changebandmusic are applicable only to those with instruments equipped. (Note: Apparently, with start/stop band being only applicable to instruments, this made it so that it was overly difficult for dancers to coordinate with music. Perhaps we can change this to accomodate music queueing and dance queueing for band flourishes so that they are in synch?)

Special Notices:

"/startband [song name]" has the player giving the command immediately begin playing and does a quick intro, then all musicians start the song together. If you select a song that not all players can do, only the players with the proper skills start playing, and you receive the message "Some members can not play that song". It's best to find out everyone's skill level first so you can have an impressive start.

"/stopband" stops all the musicians at the same time. NOTE: just using "/stop" defaults to /stopband, not /stopmusic (which just stops you). So if you're in a group of 10 musicians and type /stop to take a break, you just made everyone end. If the group leader is not performing a flourish at the time /stopband is issued, then the command wont get executed for 10 seconds (until the next experience tick comes along). If the group leader is flourishing while issueing /stopband then the command will be executed at the end of the flourish.

Changing songs:

To change band songs you use /changebandmusic (song name). You can leave off the song name, and it will prompt you with a song list.

Bandflourishes:

/bandflourish # causes every musician you are grouped with execute the same flourish.

/bandflourish # [instrument] causes every member playing the named instrument do the flourish. For a fun time, play SW3 with a Slither and a Fizz and do "/band 3 slitherhorn ; /band 6 fizz" (or maybe the numbers are the other way around...)

/bandflourish only gives xp to the player who gave the command, but will cause all players to use the action cost of that particular flourish as if they were performing it themself. It also adds to the flourish queue (you can only have 5 flourishes pending). Use /band sparingly, on a rotating schedule, or set up in advance if your goal is to put on an impressively choreagraphed show. Bandflourishes will not execute unless every musician in the band is playing at the same track on the same band timer, meaning the band has to be synchronized beforehand (using /stopband and /startband) to get everyone on cue. If a player is not on cue (for example a player who is performing their own flourishes at the time) a bandflourish is executed, then the band flourish will not go off. When executed the bandflourish synchronizes all the players for the flourish, then they return to their original base dance loops. Bandflourishes can only be initiated by the group leader while the group leader is skill animating (playing a dance or song).

You can turn off the receiving of bandflourishes using the command "/bandflourish off". This only lasts for the current song, if you stop to rest and restart, you will again be receiving /band commands.

Bandflourishing in detail :

/bandflo #, by itself, will only affect whatever it is you are doing. If you are a dancer and you do /bandflo 3, then all the bandflourish-enabled dancers will do #3 immediately. Of course if one is in the middle of a different flourish she won't so you have to be careful how you do dancing bandflos. It is not like music where it is auto-synched (though I for one wish it were). The same is true for musicians. The generic /bandflo # will only work on other musicians.

However there is a second form of /bandflo, that is, /bandflo # (instrument), which plays a flourish for a particular instrument. Our band, Hyperdrive, uses this all the time. If you've ever been to one of our performances you will notice that there are times when most of the band is playing the "base song", and a single musician is playing flourishes. Often, the SINGER and the INSTRUMENT FLOURISHER are different. I'll let you in on a little secret -- the SINGER is always, always, the one controlling every single flourish of the entire band (with one exception, that being the "Let's Get Together" duet of Neeno and Dipligonai because, well, it's a duet ...). So how, if I am playing a Mandi and singing and running the bandflourishes, do I get Neeno to flourish his fizzz? I do it with this second form: /bandflo 3 fiz (you only need enough characters to uniquely ID the instrument, so I often use things like /bandflo 3 mand, /bandflo 5 slith, etc).

Now I already had known this for a while but what I didn't know, which Tiaga instructed me on, and which I use myself now once in a while, is that if a dancer is dancing with the band, and uses form #2, the dancer can flourish individual music instruments. Yup, it works. You can't control the song they are playing, but I can dance exotic and do /bandflo 3 fiz and the fizzz player(s) will do flourish #3 of the fizzz.

Now that's not entirely on-topic for the thread, but I just wanted to make everyone aware that your dancer can, technically, flourish musical instruments. The reverse, of course, does not work, because ther are no "dance objects" to flourish (you can't do /flo 4 dancepole, heheh). So a dancer can flourish musicians if you do it right; a musician can never flourish the dancers

Experience

Music/Dancing

Music and dancing experience can be obtained anywhere so long as the player is performing a flourish. This means that a player can perform outside or in the field and still earn experience.

The base xp you get per "tick" (about 10 seconds) depends on either the song/dance level or the instrument level, whichever is higher. So playing SW1 on a Kloo horn (Musicianship IV instrument) gives you the same xp as playing SW3 (Musicianship IV song) on a slitherhorn. Then you get an extra xp per tick for each additional performer (dancer or musician) who is actively dancing/playing in your group. Then you get extra xp for each audience member watching the group. Emotes such as /cheer, /applaud, /clap from the audience will occasionally give you an extra boost for a tick or two. For each additional person in the group playing the base XP is increased by 5%. For each player that is watching the group, there is an additional 5% added to the base experience per tick.

Speaking of bonuses, I notice that my Musician XP fluctuates while playing. What's up?

A. As you may have noticed, XP is distributed by ticks, which occur about every 10 seconds. After you do a flourish you receive the maximum amount of XP possible. After that, if no more flourishes are done, you'll continue to get XP per tick, but at 1 less XP per tick. So if you did a flourish for 8 XP and didn't flourish again, the next tick would give 7 XP, the next 6 XP, etc. You must also take into account double flourishes and other band members.

Q. Double Flourishes?

A. Yes, if you do two flourishes (not actually execute them, just get the message) within one tick, you will get roughly double the XP for that tick as if you'd only done one flourish. That "double rule" is subjective though. Sometimes it will give 1 extra XP over double, sometimes two less.

Basics of the affects of flourishing on exp gain:

1> A Musician flourish lasts 5 seconds, so even though you can hit the key twice in succession, it'll still take 10 seconds to actually play the notes.
2> When determining XP, it only matters when you hit the key or when the macro sent the command, NOT when it was actually played.
3> The game counts in 10-second periods from when you started playing; you'll know when a tick ends because that's when you get the XP. If, within a 10-second "tick" you flourish once, it gives you X. If you flourished twice or more, you get 2X. If I hit the flourish key six times in a row, I'll still only get 2X, but it'll take 30 seconds to play and will drain the full Action. So, as a Musician you should always have either 0 or 2 flourishes within a given tick, never any other numbers.
4> Every tick that had zero flourishes drops 1 point off of the XP gain of the previous one.
5> Dancers flourishes basically count as two Musician flourishes, taking double the Action points and twice as long, but giving the 2X experience. You don't care about that, though.

Healing

Healing experience comes from entertainers, dancers and musicians curing players of their mind willpower and focus attribute wounds, in addition to healing their battle fatigue and buffing the mind pools. The amount of wounds and battle fatigue cured per tick varies depending on the ability used and the Battle fatigue and Wound healing modifiers for each respective profession. Players who watch entertainers heal at half the rate if the entertainer is not performing a flourish. For example, if an entertainer would normally heal a player for 100 points of wound damage per cycle while flourishing, they will only heal 50 points of wound damage per cycle if that same person watched them doing regular dancing without doing flourishes.

Healing experience is shared by the entire entertainer group. If a patron is watching a grouped entertainer, the entire group's healing modifiers sum together to allow for faster healing as the healing tick size is increased. This effect then allows the entire group to share the same experience obtained from healing the player. Experience is displayed in 3 rows of system messages. The first row displays the mind wound experience, the 2nd row displays battle fatigue experience, and the final row displays buffing experience.

Entertainers may also heal themselves simply by playing music or dancing. This works just like how it does for when another player watches an entertainer. If the entertainer does not perform a flourish, their healing rate is half of what the base rate is on the chart below. If they are performing flourishes then they will heal themselves for the base rate per tick.

Does the entertainer get exp if they heal themselves while playing?

No, entertainers (nor the group) get exp from healing themselves while performing. However if another entertainer in the group was listening or watching them, then the entertainer group does get the exp.

Since healing can only be performed in specific places, healing experience there for can only be acquired in those locations.

Additionally, entertainers only obtain healing experience in groups *IF* they are performing.

Handling Wound healing Order

A logical way we could handle wound healing order is to make it so that the wounds targeted to be healed come from the most damaged ham pool. For example if a player had 1000 primary mind wounds, 500 willpower wounds and 250 focus wounds, the system would target the 1000 primary wounds first in order to heal that pool, followed by the willpower pool and finally the focus pool.

Healing experience rates work out as follows

battlefatigue exp = bf_amount healed x 2

primary wound healing experience = primary_amount healed x 0.5

secondary wound experience = secondary_amount healed x 0.1

buffing experience = every 1% of pool buffed grants 1 experience point.

For information on buffing experience, see dancer and musician sections on the wiki.

Entertainer Healing Experience

No formula has been devised but I suppose the amount healed could work like this

Note: Healing modifiers across different professions are not cumulative, they are seperate sources. Dancer and musician modifiers differ so that a dancer's healing modifier will not 'stack' with musician.

total healed per tick = base healing amount x ( (100 + healingmodifier) / 100 )

Group healing rate should be

group heal tick = sum of group members heal total per tick

Note: Each ham pool would be healed individually. As an example, a group of 20 master musician players using nalargons and playing the star wars 1 song each have a base healing value of 14 and a wound healing (music) modifier of 85. Combined, if a player listened to these players, the player would be healed at a rate of 520 wounds per 10 second cycle per wounded ham bar, there fore if a player had a primary mind wound value of 520, a willpower wound bar of 520 and a focus wound bar of 520, the player would take 30 seconds to heal all 3 pools.

Below, the chart lists many of the base values for experience and wound heals per tick.

Additional Commentary and Notes

Can entertainers listen to other entertainers while grouped and playing?

No, they cant listen/watch to other entertainers while playing due to client command table restriction. However they can stop performing and listen/watch an entertainer in group, then begin performing again (while remaining watching/listening). This does not seem to be a bug. This allows for entertainers to heal other entertainers in the same group.

Can patrons listen to a musician in one group and watch a dancer in another group at the same time and receive healing from both? If they can watch/listen to two groups at the same time, how much do they get healed for?

The NGE Allows players to watch and listen to players from different groups simultaneously. It is unknown currently how this worked during pre-cu. Presumably a way to handle this would be to make it so that when the player watches one group, the player is simply healed based on whatever rates that the group's healing mods work for. Both groups would heal the player simultaneously at their normal values until the player reaches 0 wounds/bf.

Instrument Crafting and Use

Instrument crafting:

1. Instruments can only be created by musicians (artisans do not receive the schematics).

2. All the instruments up to and including Fanfar can be crafted using the generic crafting tool. Beyond that, you must use the specialized "Weapon, Droid, Item" crafting tool.

3. Instruments do not decay.

4. As far as has been determined, using experimentation points on the instrument quality does nothing for either the xp the player gains, or the rate of healing of the listener.

5. Instrument Crafting yields Music experience.

Instrument Use

All instruments with the exception of two (the nalargon and omni box) are simply equippable from the inventory. Nalargons and omni boxes must be dropped outside of the inventory and into the world to be used. Once done, the player may use a play instrument radial on the object and will get their song selection list. The player must also keep the nalargon and omni box targeted at all times in order to continue using them. If they change targets then they stop performing. (this behavior existed during pre-cu as well). After the player is finished they may pack up the instrument by clicking the pick up radial or they may move past 5 meters from the object and it will automatically pack up back into their inventory. When placing these instruments, the instrument will face in whatever direction the player is facing in.

Omni box in inventory

Omni box in world

Related Tags

Ability Information

Musician / Dancer Special Effects from techniques branch

Ability List