Heyo!

Because the new play system is fairly large, I wanted to go over some of the more common questions I've been getting from Platinum and Prime.


Question: What is the best way to learn?

Answer: Experience is based primarily on two factors -- how challenging the music is for you, and how long you play the song. For best training, you want to find a song that provides just the right challenge. How do you know what this is? The start-up messaging is the best guide. If you are fumbling, you need to find something easier. If you are sounding very good, you need something harder.


Question: Okay, so I need something easier/harder. How do I know what is harder and what is easier?

Answer: Assuming you are staying on the same instrument, finding the 'sweet spot' for learning isn't hard. The song types are in order for easiest to hardest. Play them -without- any styles/moods. If you are struggling, drop down a notch. If you sound too good, step up one. This will let you pin down which one teaches you best.


Question: What about moods/styles? Are those in order from easiest to hardest too?

Answer: Unfortunately, no. Why? Because a style that makes a dirge easier may make a jig harder. Most of the song / style combos are going to be PAFO, and are mostly for performance and role-playing, but if you have a favorite song type you want to train with, you can probably extend it if you find the right styles for your skill.


Question: What about off-key, halting, confident, and masterful?

Answer: These are the exception to the rule above. Off-key and halting both reduce the difficulty of a song, off-key more than halting. Confident and masterful, on the other hand, always increase the difficulty. You can always count on these four if you want to play around with pushing difficulty up or down and are too lazy to test all the various options.


Question: What are the requirements for being able to make an area into a dance floor?

Answer: You must be a Bard, first of all. The area must be an area designated for Playact use. You will also need a minimum amount of Music Theory skill. How much skill? Not going to say, except to say that it's under 200 ranks.


Question: How does the experience work? I've been playing for 3 pulses, and haven't learned much at all.

Answer: Assuming you are playing something that is reasonably challenging for you, you will gain some experience for each pulse after the start-up message. However, instead of the old timer that cut off experience completely after a certain number of tries, the new system uses ramping experience. Each pulse will teach more than the last, until it hits a cap or the song ends. This means that it is in your better interest to play the song to the end if you are trying to train.


Question: Okay, I understand that, but why do it that way?

Answer: It is in everyone's better interest to keep people from restarting songs as much as possible, since each time someone starts a song, it checks their injuries, their armor, their instrument condition, the weather, and a bazillion other things. The old system had people training music restarting songs every 10 seconds on average, which put a lot of stress on the game. By switching to the new system that only requires restarting a song every 2 minutes, a lot of that stress should be relieved, and by making the experience ramp, it should encourage people to play the song through to the finish rather than try to start-stop after each pulse. The secondary benefit here is that the room now only gets one message per musician every 30 seconds, instead of two (start/stop) every 10-15 seconds on average. This should reduce scroll issues a bit, especially in bard hangouts. Last but not least, this makes people have to put some time into training instruments while allowing me to remove the former experience timer so that folks with higher mentals or skills can continue to train effectively.


Question: I can't get the new dance verbs to work. Whassup?

Answer: To use the DANCE options, you need to have someone successfully playing a dance song in a playact area. The syntax is...
DANCE <NAME> <ACTION>
To initiate dancing with a partner, you need to DANCE <name> DANCE first. Sorry, but due to the way dance floor mechs work, this was necessary, at least for now. Once the invitation is given, you can use normal dance floor verbs as your action. For example...
DANCE <NAME> PUSH or DANCE <NAME> TURN
A full list should be available on the play.net verb list under Dance. If not, I'll see about getting it there. Yes, you can dance with yourself for some neat messaging as well -- ie DANCE DARTENIAN BOP.


Question: How much skill does my cleric need to play a Hymn or Psalm for devotion?

Answer: If you are playing on the easiest instruments, you will probably need somewhere around 100 ranks in that instrument to play well enough. Exactly how much you need depends on certain stats, the condition of the instrument, your own health, and various other minor variables, as well as your choice of styles, if any. The key thing is that you need to be able to play the hymn/psalm at least fairly well, and you can't use Off-key or Halting -- the gods aren't impressed by bad music played in their honor. Psalms are much harder than hymns, and will take a significent investment in music skill to master.


Question: Why didn't my guild get any neat special perks?

Answer: Because there are bards (and a few non-bards) in all three instances that were at the learning caps for instrumental skills (learning pretty much dropped off around 350 ranks previously), and bards at least have minimum music reqs. While I wanted to make this as cool as possible, I had to draw a line and just get it done so people could start learning again. With that said, I very much want to include several more music-based feats like gaining devotion or making dance floors. I've got a couple more approved and on the drawing board, and have been negotiating with two guilds for some more fancy guild-based feats. If you have ideas of neat things your guild might do with music, feel free to post 'em! The goal is to give some small perks for investing some time in training music skills. Nothing particularly fancy, but cool things your non-musical friends won't be able to do.



I'm sure I'll have more Q&A in the next day or two, but this is a start. Thanks for the feedback and testing, folks!


- GM Dartenian

"You ain't seen nothin' yet!" - Al Jolson

LiveJournal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/dartenian/

This message was originally posted in The Bards, Bard Guild FAQ. To discuss the above follow the link below.

http://www.play.net/forums/messages.asp?forum=20&category=15&topic=16&message=15